Biography
Professor Wen Jung Li is Vice-President (Talent and International Strategy) and Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), which was ranked by Times Higher Education as the “Most International University” in 2024, 2025 and 2026, and ranked second globally for “Research Output per Faculty Member” in 2025 and 2026. Bringing a strong talent-development and innovation perspective to the future of SMEs and start-ups, Professor Li leads global faculty recruitment and development, strengthens CityUHK’s international academic talent base, and advances strategic partnerships and research collaboration worldwide, including with emerging higher education ecosystems in Central Asia and the Middle East. He previously served as Associate Provost from 2018 to 2023, overseeing major institutional initiatives and resource planning. He joined CityUHK in 2011 after serving on the faculty of The Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1997 to 2011, where he directed the Centre for Micro and Nano Systems.
Professor Li holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. from UCLA, all in Aerospace Engineering. Before entering academia, he worked at The Aerospace Corporation and NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Internationally recognized for contributions to micro/nanotechnology, AI-enabled sensing, and embodied-intelligence robotics, he has led around 50 research projects and holds more than 25 patents across the United States, China and Hong Kong. He has also co-founded several technology start-ups with former students, commercializing smart-sensing technologies used in education, sports analytics, structural monitoring and IoT applications across more than 50 countries.
His honors include elected membership in the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence (US) and the European Academy of Engineering, and International Fellowship of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is also an IEEE Fellow, ASME Fellow, Distinguished Overseas Scholar of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and former President of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council.