Leong Hon Wai, Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore

Brief Bio

Prof. Leong received the B.Sc. (Hon) degree in Mathematics from the University of Malaya, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1978 and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986. His PhD research was done under Prof. C. L. Liu who also served the external examiner for our department (then called DISCS) between July 92 to July 96.

From 1978 to 1979 he worked as a tutor at the Department of Mathematics, University of Malaya. He joined the Department of Computer Science of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champiagn as a research assistant in 1979, where he remained as a Visiting Assistant Professor upon graduation in 1985. He joined the National University of Singapore in 1987, where he is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science within the School of Computing.

From 1993 and 1997, he was also the Division Head for Computer Science in the department. Between 1998 and 2002, he served as Assistant Dean (Special Programmes) in the School of Computing, NUS. Between 1993 and 1995, he chaired the Curriculum Committeee that made radical changes to move the curriculum to a modular system -- it also brings the curriculum close to the ACM Curricula-91 recommendations. The structure of the Modular Curriculum for Computing has remained largely intact although some of the details is undergoing fine-tuning. Between 1997 and 1999, he was also involved in the MOE Curriculum Review Committee on the new A-level Computing Syllabus for Singapore. He is also an advisor to the Computing Curriculum for Hwa Chong Institution. Since 1992, Prof. Leong has chaired of the Singapore IOI Committee that prepares the Singapore team for the International Olympaid on Informatics (IOI). Starting from 1998, he introduced the National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI), the annual programming competition in Singapore. In December 1999, he organized the 1999 International Software Competition (ISSC-99) that was held Singapore in conjunction with the SEARCC'99 conference. He was also the Chief Judge for the 2000 Intl. Software Competition that was held in Manila, Philippines. Starting from March 1994, he also serves on the Executive Council of the Singapore Computer Society (SCS). Currently, he chairs the SCS IT Leaders Award Committee.

His research focuses on the the design and analysis of efficent algorithms for optimization problems from many application areas including VLSI CAD, transportation logistics, multimedia video processing, and most recently, bioinformatics and computational biology. In computational biology, his current interests includes computational proteomics, sequencing-by-hybridization, design of optimal synthesis sequence for oligo microarray synthesis, fragment assembly, and genome rearrangement. In transportation logistics, he has worked on providing efficient solutions to large-scale resource allocation and scheduling problems. Two software prototype systems were developed--the BAPS (Berth Allocation Planning System) for container transshipment ports, and RADS (for Route ADvisory System) for land transportation). In particular, RADS, is a fast intelligent bus/MRT search engine for commuters. The system plans travel by bus/subway taking into account various factors such as commuter preferences, walking times and dynamic waiting times at the bus stops.

Prof. Leong enjoys teaching and working with students. He has taught courses in combinatorial and graph algorithms, algorithms, data structures, discrete mathematics, and problem solving in computing. In the mid-90's, he introduced the use of practical examination to evaluate programming ability of the students for introductory programming courses in the School of Computing, NUS. He currently also teaches a broad-based introductory course entitled "Computer Science and the IT Revolution" for the University Scholar's Programme in NUS. His teaching emphasizes independent thinking and learning, and creative problem solving. In his Assistant Dean portfolio (1998-2002), he looked after many special programmes that are designed to give students added opportunities to explore and develop themselves in areas of research, leadership, problem solving, and broad exposure. Prof. Leong has also been involved with students from secondary schools and JCs in Singapore - via research projects in SRP and the GEP programmes in NUS.

Prof. Leong is a member of ACM and IEEE. He is serving on the Steering Committee of the IEEE Asia-South-Pacific Design Automation Conference. He has also involved in the organization of several internal conference and workshops -- the 1997 International Symposium on Algorithms and Complexity, ISAAC-97, the 2002 International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON-02), the 2006 RECOMB Workshop on Regulatory Genomics (RECOMB-Regulation-06), and the 2006 Workshop on BioAlgorithmics (BioAlg-06).

He received the Best Presentation Award in CAD in ICCD-85 and was co-receipient of the Best Paper Award in VLSI CAD in the APCCAS-92. He is a co-author of the book Simulated Annealing for VLSI Design published by Kluwer Academic Publishers.