Prof. Kwok (Ricky) received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Hong Kong in 1991, and the M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Computer Science, from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 1994 and 1997, respectively. Before returning to the University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor in August 1998, he was a Visiting Scholar for one year in the Parallel Processing Laboratory, the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana, USA), where he worked on a DARPA research project in the field of distributed heterogeneous computing. During his sabbatical leave year (from August 2004 to July 2005), Ricky worked as a Visiting Associate Professor in the Internet and Grid Computing Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering--Systems at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, California, USA), where he conducted research on several interesting Internet security problems such as DDoS defense and traceback, worm containment and signature generation, etc. From July 2007 to May 2009, he also worked as an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Colorado State University (Fort Collins, Colorado, USA), where he taught courses and conducted research in the areas of wireless sensor networks, high performance computer architecture, reconfigurable computing systems, and heterogeneous computing.

Ricky's research focus has been on designing efficient communication protocols and robust resources management algorithms toward enabling large scale distributed mobile computing. In these research areas, he has authored one textbook, co-authored another two textbooks, and published more than 200 technical papers in various leading journals, research books, and refereed international conference proceedings. He is a Senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Ricky is a Fellow of the HKIE, the IEEE, and the IET. He is also a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Communications Society. From March 2006 to December 2011, Ricky served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing as a Subject Area Editor in Peer-to-Peer Computing. Since January 2013, Ricky has been an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems.

Ricky has been actively involved in various administrative tasks at the departmental, school, and university levels. He served as the Co-Director of the Computer Engineering Programme from 2000 to 2002. He then served as the Programme Director of the Master of Science in Electrical and Electronic Engineering programme from 2002 to 2007. Since 2002, he has also been serving as the Associate Programme Director of the Master of Science in Electronic Commerce and Internet Computing programme. He was the Director of the High Performance Computing Laboratory from 2000 to 2007. He was also elected to serve on the Head's Advisory Committee (HAC) from 2000 to 2007. During 2010 to 2014, Ricky was the Chairman of the Departmental Curriculum Review and Development Committee (DCRDC), managing curriculum reform for smooth transition to four-year degree programmes. From 2012 to 2014, he was the Deputy Head of the Department, overseeing resources management issues. Ricky is currently Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning), assisting the Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) in various T&L endeavors related to e-learning (e.g., MOOCs). Check hereabout the exciting T&L activities at HKU. As of April 2015, he also serves as an Associate Dean of Engineering, looking after special projects and other new initiatives.

Ricky received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from HKU in November 2004. In January 2010, one of his journal papers was ranked #4 among top ten All-Time Most Cited Papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, based on Scopus and Google Scholar citation counts as of October 2009 (see the Editor's Note for details). In April 2013, he got the Outstanding Reviewer Service Award from the IEEE Computer Society (under the Reviewer Appreciation Program) because as of 2013 he was the All-Time Most Prolific Reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (see this official announcement).