Jimmy Lee's
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“Education without values, as useful as it is,
seems rather to make a man more clever devil.” C.S. Lewis
[CV][Publications]
Jimmy Lee graduated on the Dean's Honours List with
an Honours BMath degree,
majoring both in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1987. He received his MMath
degree in Computer Science in 1988 also from Waterloo. Jimmy then moved to the University of Victoria, Canada, and completed his doctoral studies in 1992
under the supervision of the late Maarten
van Emden (see Maarten’s wonderful scientific blog and Jimmy’s commemoration of Maarten) in the area of constraint
logic programming. During his graduate studies, he was involved in research
projects funded by IBM (Canada) and the Canadian Institute of Robotics and
Intelligent Systems. Upon graduation, Jimmy returned to Hong Kong and joined The Chinese University of
Hong Kong, where he is now Director of the University Planning Office,
Acting Director of the Internal Audit
Office, Associate Head of the New Asia
College, Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Professor (by courtesy) in the Department of Systems
Engineering and Engineering Management. He is currently a member
of the Board of Trustees, New Asia College
and was on the University
Council, CUHK during 2019-23. In his past life, he was Associate Dean
(Education) during 2019-21 and Assistant Dean (Education) during 2018-19 of the
Faculty of Engineering, Graduate
Division Head of Financial
Technology during 2019-21, Graduate Division Head of Computer Science
during 2008-11, and was in charge of the Department’s curricula and
Teaching and Learning matters during 2011-14 to oversee the transition to the
334-curriculum.
Jimmy's research focuses on the theory and practice of constraint
satisfaction and optimization with applications in combinatorial optimization,
scheduling, and resource allocation. In particular, he is interested in problem
modeling, stochastic local search, symmetry and dominance breaking, global
constraints, and over-constrained problems. His PhD student, Allen Zhong, won
the Best Student Paper Award at the 28th International Conference on
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, held in Haifa, Israel,
in August, 2022. On the practical
side, he joins hand with Darwin Lau
and Anthony Sum to build autonomous
robots in such applications as indoor
hydroponic farming and painting at construction sites. See the hydroponics
robots and SLAM
robot prototype running around and doing all sorts of interesting
maneuver. Another one of his fun
projects results in the framework of Infinite Stream Constraint Programming
(see Publications). See
the Inverted Pendulum Robot and Flying Quadrotor in action
using a controller synthesized by the framework. During the 2000s and early
2010s, he researched also on novel Web-based learning platforms and
accompanying pedagogies, particularly in the design and development of
educational games (take a look at Tong Pak Fu and
Chou Heung: the Probabilistic Fantasy, Farmtasia, and Learning Villages). He was the Associate Director (Research and
Development) and then Director of the Center for the Advancement
of Information Technology in Education during 2004-12. He is also interested in popularizing
Science. Check out his talk on A.I. Meeting Sci-Fi (in Chinese) at the New Asia Middle School. Inspired by his
many former good teachers from elementary school to universities, Jimmy
received the University Education Award, which is the highest honour bestowed upon contributions to Teaching and Learning
at the University, in 2017. Check out the award sharing video. He was recipient
of the Vice-Chancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award in 2005 and again in 2016 (being the only person in
the Faculty of Engineering receiving the Award twice), and the Faculty of Engineering Exemplary Teaching Award for the academic years
1998-99, 1999-00, 2000-01, 2002-03, 2004-05
and 2014-15. He was also
recognized for his outstanding services with the Faculty of Engineering by the Faculty Service Award for 2003-04.
In Collaboration with Peter
Stuckey of the University of Melbourne (now at the Monash
University), Jimmy has produced two MOOCs on “Basic Modeling of
Discrete Optimization” and “Advanced Modeling of Discrete
Optimization”. The MOOCs are designed and developed with the Fable-based Learning pedagogy, and feature both a Chinese and English versions. Learners will
walk through an interesting fantasy based on the famous novel, Romance of the
Three Kingdoms (三國演義), with the teachers, while learning advanced
computing technologies to solve difficult real-life problems. The MOOCs,
available both in Mandarin and English, were launched on Coursera in January, 2017. You can take a look at the
promotional videos (Mandarin and English) to find out more about
the courses. The third and latest MOOC on “Solving Algorithms for
Discrete Optimization” is out. You can check out the promotional
videos (Mandarin and English) and also a paper in EAAI
2020 describing the pedagogical design and initial research studies of the
MOOCs. Both Peter and Jimmy were
featured as Top Instructors on
Coursera, which is an honour for the top 10
instructors in each subject domain based on the instructor ratings given by the
learners.
Besides being active in local community services, Jimmy is an Associate
Editor of the Journal
of Artificial Intelligence Research (AAAI Press) and Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning (World Scientific), and also on the editorial board
of the CONSTRAINTS journal
(Springer). He was an Associate Editor of Artificial
Intelligence Review (Springer) and
of the Journal of Discrete Algorithms (Elsevier) during 2005-14. He was a founding editor of Constraint Programming
News with Eric Monfroy and Toby Walsh. Jimmy
was an elected member of the Executive
Committee of the Association for Constraint
Programming during 2006-09, and served
as the Secretary of the Association
from 2006 to 2012. He is
§ an Area Chair
of the 39th Annual AAAI
Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2025)
§ a PC member of
the 22nd
International Conference on the Integration of Constraint Programming,
Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research (CPAIOR 2025)
Jimmy was the Program Chair of CP 2011, held in beautiful Perugia (see wonderful photos taken by Helmut Simonis) and organized by Stefano Bistarelli. He was also an Invited
Speaker at CP 2023 in Toronto.
Jimmy is a Distinguished
Fellow (the acceptance video) of the Hong Kong Computer Society and a Fellow of
the Hong Kong
Institution of Engineers. He was
a Convenor of the Standards Assurance Sub-Committee, Hong Kong ICT Awards
during 2010-16, and was also an appointed
member on the Steering Committee on Strategic Development of Information
Technology in Education and the Steering Committee on Selection, Quality
Assurance and Review for the e-Textbook Market Development Scheme, Education Bureau, Hong Kong SAR Government.
Jimmy knows he is a “well-known” scientist, but didn’t
expect to be inducted “involuntarily” to be a member of the EU Academy
of Sciences even when he didn’t
reply to the invitation. Ignoring it didn’t seem to work since he
received a reminder! Not sure if he
should add that to his CV.
Jimmy considers himself a fairly athletic person. Besides being a
mediocre table-tennis and soccer
player, Jimmy started long distance running in
year 2000 as a hobby to torture his body and clean up his soul (if there is
one). His immediate next goal is to finish a full marathon under 4 hours
(achieved his personal best of 4 hours 4 minutes 33 seconds painfully at the
29eme Marathon International de Paris), although his running career is in semi-hibernation now. He also
claimed the “Fastest Old Men” title
(Staff Category) at the 2005
New Asia College Happy Run event (can
you find him there?), dashing approximately 7.5K from the New Asia College to the Prince
of Wales Hospital.
Together with his good and long-time partner, Ronald Chung, Jimmy
captured the 2nd Runners-Up in the Men's
Double Table-Tennis Event of the
2005 Hong Kong Teacher Tennis and Table-Tennis Competition. Jimmy reached
the peak of his totally-non-professional career by partnering with CC Ah Lung
to claim the championship in the Men’s
Double Event of the CUHK Staff
Table-Tennis Tournament in 2011 and again in 2013. He also captured
the 4th place in the 2013 Joint U Table Tennis Invitation Match, in
which the CUHK
team did very well. Look at the
“angry” player in
action at the 2011 Hong Kong Teacher Table-Tennis
Competition, in which our CUHK team captured the team championship. On the social side, Jimmy enjoys alcohol
sampling (see the pretending
connoisseur in action) and random
rumbling. Jimmy is fortunate to have many good friends and
colleagues. Besides being good companions to Jimmy in many activities,
they care also about his spiritual
behavior and purity with K.H. Wong presenting him the nice t-shirt. His good
colleague, K.H. Lee, gave him a
bottle of ultimate sports drink for marathoners (a.k.a. Chinese vodka) to ease his training pain.
Jimmy and his wife (and another friend) had the pleasure of taking this photo with Prof. Charles Kao and Mrs. Kao, 2009 Nobel Laureate in Physics, on March 27, 2009 (half a year before the prize was announced), at the
20th Anniversary dinner of the Chinese University Women’s
Organization (CUWO).
If you are bored, take a look at some
of the quotes, jokes, and writings and proverbs that Jimmy has collected over the years (some in
Chinese). Please share this present with all. Also, this Management Lesson would
certainly benefit you for a lifetime. What is the truth in the corporate
world? It depends on the viewing
angle. This amazing
piece relates coffee, coffee cups, and life
(read it even if you don’t like coffee). If you are male,
don’t miss this Cautionary
Tale for Men (in Chinese) which teaches
us all an important lesson. Everyone has parents, and everyone should
read this (in Chinese). We
don’t want to be the cause of a heart-attack (in
Chinese), do we? You may change your personal philosophy after seeing
this Tibetian
Monks’ sand art (in
Chinese). Are you upset today? If so, read this (in Chinese). The commencement address by Steve Jobs at the
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jlee
‘at’ cse.cuhk.edu.hk |