UW Converge Taipei 2019 Bios

Biographies and photos provided by speakers. UWAA does not edit these statements for accuracy, style or grammar. 

Session Speakers

Jean Choy

As the Associate Dean at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, Jean is responsible for developing long-term strategic partnerships to promote new business development and collaborative initiatives with corporations, academic institutions, and government offices to mutually benefit the organizations and the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington.

Jean travels extensively to meet with community and business leaders to assess their needs and offer various executive development opportunities that can be integrated into their business strategies and address key challenges to strengthen their business.

In addition, Jean teaches regularly in the Global Executive MBA Program as well as numerous executive education programs for working professionals. Teaching to a group of western professionals as well as a class primarily consisting of global citizenship takes a different kind of an approach. Some aspects of soft skills could be applied universally, but at the same time, understanding the different cultures and challenges become an integral part of the teaching as topics such as presentation skills, cross-cultural communications, and managing team dynamics are introduced. Jean has been successful in bridging these gaps and consistently receive top teaching ratings.

Her previous positions and responsibilities include key roles as the General Manager of Emerald City Executive Suites; Operations Manager of the CEO Walls Group in California; both in the executive suite industry, and Manager of Asian American Programs at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Jean is fluent in English, and also speaks Korean, and Japanese. She was born in Seoul, South Korea. At the age of four, her family moved to Japan. There she continued to learn Korean at home, English at an international school, and Japanese in the community and school. Ten years later she immigrated to the United States, entered high school and graduated as the Valedictorian. Jean studied international business and finance at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a “double husky” earning both her BA and her MBA from the UW Foster School of Business.

Jean teaches communications workshops at companies such as Amazon and Boeing, but also gives presentations at various organizations including Yonsei University in Korea; Pukyong National University in Korea; Tsinghua University; Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) University in China; and University Consortium of Executive Education.

She currently serves on the board of Washington Poison Center, UNICON Board; and the Global Bankers Program Board.

 

William Covington

William Covington directs the Technology Law and Public Policy Clinic (Clinic) at the University of Washington School of Law (UW Law). The Clinic provides students with the opportunity to craft legislation and write white papers in areas where policy and technology intersect. Work which Professor Covington’s students have completed includes:

• Assisting in the establishment of Washington State’s Office of Privacy and Data Security;
• Helping craft rules allowing the testing of autonomous vehicles in Washington State;
• Identifying potential legal challenges for operators of TOR exit nodes;
• Modifying and strengthening the City of Seattle’s Surveillance Ordinance; and
• Establishing best practices for police forces using body cameras.

Under Professor Covington’s direction UW law students have conducted legislative workshops, testified before the Seattle City Council and worked in collaboration with the Evans School of Public Policy, the University of Washington’s Information School, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington State and Legal Voice. In addition, Professor Covington’s students have developed polices on: bringing Internet services to rural communities; preventing three dimensional printers from abusing intellectual property protections and promoting the use of alternative forms of generating electricity.

Besides his clinical work, Professor Covington teaches tort law to LLM candidates and Perspectives on the Law to students seeking a juris doctorate. Professor Covington has received the Dean’s Medal for Outstanding Service to the Law School. Prior to joining the UW Law faculty Covington served as regulatory counsel for Group W Cable Communications and McCaw Cellular Communications. Professor Covington received his undergraduate degree from New York University and his juris doctorate from the University of Michigan.

 

Brian Fabien

Brian Fabien is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. From 1983 to 1985 he worked at Perkin-Elmer in Danbury Connecticut where he served as the lead mechanical engineer on the construction of the Optical Control System for the Hubble Space Telescope. His primary areas of research and teaching deal with the subjects of kinematics, dynamics and control. He is the lead faculty advisor for the UW EcoCAR team and has written more than 100 conference and journal papers, as well as two textbooks. His awards and honors include: the National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellowship Award, a Fulbright Faculty Fellowship Award, The Boeing Company Ed Wells Faculty Fellowship Award, a National Science Foundation Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award, the Valerie Logan Leadership in Science Education Award, the College of Engineering Faculty Teaching and Learning Award.

 

Jeff Hou (侯志仁)

Jeff Hou (侯志仁) is Professor of Landscape Architecture and a Taiwan Studies faculty member at the University of Washington, Seattle. Hou’s work focuses on public space, democracy, community design, and civic engagement. In a career that spans the Pacific, he has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, and fishers in Taiwan, neighborhood residents in Japan, villagers in China, and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in North American cities. Hou is recognized for his pioneering writings on guerrilla urbanism and bottom-up placemaking, with collaborative publications including Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (2010), Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking (2013), Now Urbanism: The Future City is Here (2015), Messy Urbanism: Understanding the ‘Other’ Cities of Asia (2016), City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy (2017), and Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity (2017). Hou has lectured widely around the world on topics of democratic design and insurgent placemaking. He was appointed as the City of Vienna Visiting Professor at TU Wien in 2013, and was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan in 2015.

 

Camille Hu (胡筱薇)

Camille, Hsiao-Wei, Hu received a PhD degree in information management from the National Central University and had been a research scholar at the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University, US. She is currently an Associate Professor with the School of Big Data Management, Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan. Her research interests include data analysis, data mining, machine learning, social network analysis, information retrieval, knowledge discovery, decision support systems, and electronic commerce technologies. Currently, She is focusing on machine learning techniques with CyberTurfing issue. Her research has appeared in Decision Support Systems, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE SMCB, and Expert Systems with Applications.

 

Chih-Kung Lee (李世光)

C.K. Lee received his B.S degree in Civil Engineering from National Taiwan University in 1981. He continued his graduate studies with a fellowship at Cornell University in New York where he received a M.S and Ph.D., majoring in Theoretical & Applied Mechanics, with a minor in Physics. During his PhD studies at Cornell, he developed piezoelectric modal sensors and actuators. This innovation was important in the control of flexible structures as it resolved modal spillover.

In 1987, C.K. Lee joined IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California as a Research Staff Member and later as a Staff to the IBM ARC Laboratory Director. His research work at IBM was primarily on the interdisciplinary areas related to magnetic disk drives, optoelectronic systems, metrology systems and piezoelectric systems. He was awarded an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award for his work on reducing the thermal track mis-registration of the 3.5 inch, 320 MByte, IBM 0661 hard disk file, a highly profitable commercial product at that time. He received two distinguished Invention Awards for his inventions and patents on laser encoders, nanometer fly height measurement systems, piezoelectric strain rate gages, and acceleration rate sensors for early shock arrival.

Dr. Lee is currently the Chairman of Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Institute for Information Industry (III). He is also a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate Institute of Electronics Engineering, the Institute of Applied Mechanics (IAM) and the Dept. of Engineering Science & Ocean Engineering at National Taiwan University.

 

Jamie Chih-Chen Lin (林之晨)

Jamie Lin started AppWorks, which is Asia’s leading startup accelerator and one of the region’s most active early-stage VCs. AppWorks Accelerator, the renowned 6-month free accelerator program, now admits 30 startups per batch from across the region and boasts 328 active startups and 925 founders in its alumni network. All AppWorks startups together generate US$ 2.5 billion in annual revenues, provide 9,586 jobs and are valued at US$ 3.6 billion. As a VC, AppWorks has US$ 61M under management. It funds 10 deals a year, has 50 companies in its portfolio, including Lalamove, 17 Media, Carousell, 91APP, KKday, and Shopback.

Before becoming an investor, Jamie was a founder for 10 years. In 1999, he co-founded Hotcool.com, a pioneer in Taiwan’s burgeoning e-commerce industry. After funding dried up post dotcom crash, Hotcool evolved into Intumit, a successful SaaS startup in natural language processing / AI / chatbot verticals. In 2006, Jamie co-founded travel startup Sosauce.com in New York. After Sosauce pivoted into Muse Games in 2009, Jamie moved back to Taipei to start a VC by founders for founders — AppWorks.

Growing up, Jamie was a geek. He started coding and putting computers together since the age of 10. His blog, MR JAMIE, has provided inspirations to millions of readers in the venture community since 2009.

Besides AppWorks, Jamie is currently serving as Chief Executive of Taiwan Mobile. He has been active in contributing back to the community as Chairman of Taiwan Internet and E-commerce Association (TiEA), Taiwan’s leading trade organization for digital industry. He also serves as an Alternate Member at APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) among many other community leadership roles.

 

James Lin

James Lin is Assistant Professor of International Studies and a historian of Taiwan and its interactions with the world in the 20th century. His research examines international agrarian development, beginning with rural reform and agricultural science in China and Taiwan from the early 20th century through the postwar era, then its subsequent re-imagining during Taiwanese development missions to Africa, Asia, and Latin America from the 1950s onward. He earned his PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017, and at the University of Washington teaches courses on modern Taiwanese history, interdisciplinary Taiwan Studies, political economy, and development. Lin is the first faculty to be hired as part of the UW Jackson School’s new Taiwan Studies Program.

 

Sean Mooney

Dr. Sean Mooney is an innovator and researcher in biomedical informatics. He now leads Research Information Technology for UW Medicine as Chief Research Information Officer (CRIO) and as a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education at the UW.  As part of his role, he leads informatics for the Institute of Translational Health Sciences and other projects involving research computing both regionally and nationally. He continues to maintain a research group with a focus on data science and on translation to practice new data science methods. Additionally, he has a strong interests in leveraging the community of scientists to collaboratively solve difficult problems in biomedical research through open challenges. As an entrepreneur, he was the Grand Prize winner in the $150K Garage.com PlanEDU Business Plan Competition in 2000 and he also co-founded BioE2E in Silicon Valley and the Indiana Biomedical Entrepreneur Network, both as non-profits focusing on enabling biomedical entrepreneurship. Previously, he has held academic appointments at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, UC Berkeley, the University of Southern California and Indiana University (where he was awarded tenure in medical genetics). He received his BS from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, his PhD at UCSF and was the American Cancer Society John Peter Hoffman Fellow at Stanford University in Genetics and Biomedical Informatics. He is a fourth generation Seattleite and in his personal time enjoys running, hiking and biking with notable achievements of climbing Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker and has bicycled across the United States twice.

 

Ethan Tu (杜奕瑾)

Mr. Tu is a pioneer in Taiwan’s AI industry and the founder of Taiwan’s largest and most popular online bulletin board system PTT. He worked as Microsoft’s Director of Research and Development for AI in the Asia-Pacific Region for 11 years, being one of the main figures in Microsoft’s Cortana development. In 2016, he founded the Taiwan AI Labs, which is a Taipei-based and privately-funded research organisation specialised in AI solutions. Since its inception, the team has shown significant results in medical AI/imaging applications, drone applications, Smart City applications, speech recognition and face recognition, while fostering and retaining local talents.

 

Kuansan Wang

Kuansan Wang is Managing Director of Microsoft Research Outreach in Redmond, WA. He joined Microsoft Research in 1998, first as a researcher in the Speech Technology Group working on multimodal dialog system, then as an architect in the Speech Product Group that shipped various speech products, including the Voice Command on mobile that eventually becomes Cortana, and Microsoft Speech Server that is still powering Microsoft and partners’ call centers. In 2007, he rejoined Microsoft Research to work on large scale natural language understanding and web search technologies, and is currently responsible for running the largest machine reading efforts that use AI agents to dynamically acquire knowledge from the web and make it available to the general public. Kuansan received his BS from National Taiwan University and MS and PhD from University of Maryland, College Park, respectively, all in Electrical Engineering. In addition to 100+ scholarly papers and 90+ patents he has published, his work has also been adopted into 10 international standards from W3C, Ecma and ISO.

 

Panelist

George C.C. Chen, ’85

Mr. Chen has practiced Law since he passed bar in 1981 in Taiwan. Mr. Chen has practiced intellectual property related law areas. He handled and assisted the first Taiwanese company investigated by patent infringement before the U.S. International Trade Commission under the 337 Article of the Tariff Act. He successfully representing many Taiwanese companies to negotiate patent license with the U.S. & European patent holders.

He also representing Taiwanese hi-tech and IT companies for patent licensing; negotiation & litigation in the U.S. either negotiation or litigation brought and filed by companies such as IBM, AT&T, RCA, Lucent, TI, Philips, Intel, Siemens, Micron, Kodak, O2 Micro, Hitachi, NEC, Toshiba, Sharp, Seiko, Samsung, Sisvel, OKI, EMI(TENA), Heraeus, Rockwell, Harris, Gertrude Neumark Rothchild etc.

He represented the IFPI (RIT) in the first Taiwan peer to peer related copyright infringement case on the Internet. He also represented the first copyright infringement case regarding platform for movie DVD rental on Internet in Taiwan. And he represented a leading and largest book publisher in the first electronic database copyright infringement case in Taiwan. He also presented the first Taiwan trade secret related criminal case for the Industrial Technology Research Institute.

In addition to practicing law, Mr. Chen provided lectures with respect to artificial intelligence, blockchain and fin-tech in the recent years. He taught the U.S. patent litigation as the Technical Personnel at Professor Level, Graduate School of Law in the National Taiwan University. And he had been the Associate Professor, Graduate Institute of Intellectual Property in the National Chengchi University.

 

Liang-Kung Chen (陳亮恭)

Dr. Liang-Kung Chen is currently Director of the Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology of Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Professor of National Yang Ming University School of Medicine and Chairman of Asia Pacific League of Clinical Gerontology and Geriatrics. Dr. Chen is the editorial member of several international and local journals, including Taiwan Geriatrics and Gerontology, Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics and Case Reports in Medicine, Journal of the Korean Geriatrics Society, Associate Editor of Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging, and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Clinical Gerontology and Geriatrics and has published more than 120 peer-reviewed articles.

Dr. Chen’s research work is focused three domains: (1) frailty and sarcopenia, (2) insulin resistance and cardio-metabolic health of older people, (3) long-term care, and (4) health service research for older people in Asian societies

 

Ralph Cheng, ’14

Ralph Cheng is the CEO of Tmesis Technology, a systematic quant fund focusing on US equity and forex market. The fund was awarded the Most Innovative Hedge Fund Manager and Alternative Investment Award by Acquisition International and Wealth & Finance Magazine in 2017. Ralph was a member of Husky Trader Student Club during his time in UW. After graduation, he co-founded the hedge fund and pledged to build an automatic trading system with minimal human involvement. By sending the trade signals to the brokers through API and FIX protocol, he believes a long-term high investment decision quality comes from discipline before intelligence, and it is well proven by the stable investment result.

 

Chih-hsing Ho (何之行)

Dr. Chih-hsing Ho is Assistant Research Fellow at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Her research focuses on the nexus of law and medicine in general, with particular attention to the governance of genomics and newly emerging technologies, such as biobanks, big data and artificial intelligence (AI). She is a member of the Biobank Ethics Review Committee at the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) in Taiwan and a member of the Ethics and Governance Council (EGC) of Taiwan Biobank. Since 2015, she has been a PI in law for a health cloud project in Taiwan and is responsible for designing an adequate regulatory framework for the secondary use of health data and data linkage. She holds a Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE) where she was an Olive Stone Scholar. She obtained her first law degree from Taiwan, and later received her LLM from Columbia Law School and a JSM from Stanford University. Since 2016, she has served as Associate Editor at the Editorial Board of ELSI in Science and Genetics- Frontiers. Before moving back to Taipei in 2014, she had been working at the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law (CMEL) at the University of Hong Kong. Her works appear in many renowned international journals, such as BMC Medical Ethics, Medical Law International, Frontiers in Genetics, Asian Bioethics Review, and the Journal of Law, Information and Science.

 

Gary Hsieh

Gary Hsieh is an associate professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering and the Pual G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering (by courtesy) at University of Washington. Using a blend of skills in engineering and expertise in social sciences, he studies and designs technologies to help people improve their lives and their societies. He has over 18 years of experience in the field of human computer interaction (HCI) and UX, and have received multiple best paper rewards and honorable mentions for research published at top HCI conferences. He received a National Science Foundation Early CAREER Development Award in 2013 and is currently a Fulbright Scholar visiting National Tsing Hua University and National Taiwan University.

 

Jenq-Neng Hwang

Dr. Jenq-Neng Hwang received the BS and MS degrees, both in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1981 and 1983 separately. He then received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Southern California. In the summer of 1989, Dr. Hwang joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) of the University of Washington in Seattle, where he has been promoted to Full Professor since 1999. He served as the Associate Chair for Research from 2003 to 2005, and from 2011-2015. He is currently the Associate Chair for Global Affairs and International Development in the ECE Department. He is the founder and co-director of the Information Processing Lab., which has won CVPR AI City Challenges awards consecutively in the past years. He has written more than 350 journal, conference papers and book chapters in the areas of machine learning, multimedia signal processing, and multimedia system integration and networking, including an authored textbook on “Multimedia Networking: from Theory to Practice,” published by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Hwang has close working relationship with the industry on multimedia signal processing and multimedia networking.

Dr. Hwang received the 1995 IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Best Journal Paper Award. He is a founding member of Multimedia Signal Processing Technical Committee of IEEE Signal Processing Society and was the Society’s representative to IEEE Neural Network Council from 1996 to 2000. He is currently a member of Multimedia Technical Committee (MMTC) of IEEE Communication Society and also a member of Multimedia Signal Processing Technical Committee (MMSP TC) of IEEE Signal Processing Society. He served as associate editors for IEEE T-SP, T-NN and T-CSVT, T-IP and Signal Processing Magazine (SPM). He is currently on the editorial board of ZTE Communications, ETRI, IJDMB and JSPS journals. He served as the Program Co-Chair of IEEE ICME 2016 and was the Program Co-Chairs of ICASSP 1998 and ISCAS 2009. Dr. Hwang is a fellow of IEEE since 2001.

 

Sophia Tong (童至祥)

Sophia Tong is the CEO of Test Rite Group and is responsible for the formulation and evaluation of business strategies and overseeing the company’s operations. Sophia holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in foreign languages and literature from National Taiwan University, and she has attended various executive development programs at Harvard University and the Asia Institute of Management.Prior to joining Test Rite as CEO in March 2009, Sophia was the first female General Manager at IBM Taiwan. She joined IBM in 1981 and had an illustrious 27-year career at the company. Sophia led IBM Taiwan’s Financial Services Sector before moving to China to take up several roles, including: UNIX Server Brand Executive; Executive of Operations & Special Projects in the Financial Services Sector; Public Sector Executive; and Director of the China Banking Cluster for the IBM Greater China Group. She then became IBM Taiwan’s General Manager from 2006 to 2009, where she headed sales and distribution, procurement and system/application development, and was in charge of more than 1,600 employees nationwide.As CEO of Test Rite Group, the company has garnered various awards, such as the Executive Yuan’s National Human Resources Development InnoPrize for jobs creation, various service industry branding awards, green marketing accolades, and Best Company to Work For awards, to name a few. In addition, Test Rite has been recognized internationally with Best Partner Awards from leading retailers in the U.S. and Europe, such as Walmart, Michaels, and many more.

 

Vincent Shih (施立成 )

Vincent is responsible for leading the Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs (CELA) group in providing full scale support on IT industry policy engagement, corporate social responsibility, and serving as the main contact on government relationship and industry associations for Microsoft Taiwan and Microsoft GCR Marketing and Operation Group. He also leads the team providing full range of legal support on commercial and licensing transactions, IPR and cybersecurity strategy, as well as litigation and Fair Trade Law related issues. Vincent also serves as the key member of Microsoft Taiwan Corporate Governance Committee to fulfil the vision of Corporate Governance, CSR and Philanthropies. In addition to supporting Greater China Region projects, Vincent has also been selected to join Microsoft GEO-Rotation program and worked in Microsoft Intellectual Property Group based in Seattle headquarter to further obtain hands-on experience on global IPR management and strategy.

Vincent earned his LL. B degree from National Taiwan University, LL.M degree from Boalt Hall (Law School), U.C. Berkeley, and obtained his EMBA degree from Business School of National ChengChi University. He is active in community affairs and industry associations such as serving as Deputy Chairman, Governor as well as Co-chairs of IP&Licensing Committee of American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei; Deputy Chairman of Taiwan Technology Industry Legal Officers Association (TILO); Executive Board of Information Service Industry Association of R.O.C. (CISA);; Board of Director of Licensing Executives Society (LES) Chinese Taipei; President of Berkeley Law Taiwan Alumni (BLTA); Adjunct Assistant Professor of School of Law, Soochow University; Team Teaching Lecturer of School of Law, Shih Hsin University; and has served as Adjunct Lecturer and Course Planning Advisor of the Institution of Intellectual Property of National Taipei University of Technology. Vincent is also a member of Taiwan Society of Comparative Law, Rotary Club of Taipei Chung Yuan as well as Taipei, Kaohsiung and Hsin-Chu Bar Associations.

Prior to joining Microsoft, he has practiced law for Baker & McKenzie Taipei office as well as the San Diego office of Baker & McKenzie. Before practicing as a licensed attorney, Vincent passed the National Examination and served as a Notary Public at Shih-Lin District Court.
In addition to frequently delivering speeches to various institutions, Vincent has also published professional articles such as:

• The Developing Strategy of Taiwan Software and Information Industry – Analysed from the international trend of moving from Open Source to Mixed Source. (EMBA Thesis, Business School of National ChengChi University.)
• Development and Legal issues in Information Security (Electronic Commerce Pilot; Section 12, Volume 6), a monthly newsletter published by Advanced e-Commerce Institute, Institute for Information Industry.)
• Copyright Protection in Digital Era – From Third Party Liability Perspective (Thesis, present in the 5th Cross-Strait IPR Academic Seminar, organized by Graduate Institution of IPR, National ChengChi University and IPR Colleague, Shanghai University; Co-author with David Su)
• Cable Television in Taiwan: Institutional and Legal Perspectives on the Cable Law and Future Development. (Thesis, Boalt Hall at U.C. Berkeley. )

 

UW Leadership

Mario Barnes

Mario L. Barnes is the Toni Rembe Dean of the University of Washington School of Law and a nationally recognized scholar for his research on the legal and social implications of race and gender, primarily in the areas of employment, education, criminal and military law.

Dean Barnes joined UW from UC Irvine School of Law where he served as professor and senior associate dean for academic affairs and taught courses in criminal justice, constitutional law, critical theories and national security law.

Before joining UCI in 2009, he was a faculty member at the University of Miami School of Law, where he was twice selected as Outstanding Law Professor.

Prior to his academic career, Barnes spent 12 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy, including service as a prosecutor, defense counsel, special assistant U.S. attorney, and on the commission that investigated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. His reserve assignments included service with the Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command in San Diego, the Navy Inspector General’s Office in Washington, D.C., and U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa. He retired from the Navy in 2013, after 23 years of combined active and reserve service.

Barnes earned both his bachelor’s degree in psychology and his juris doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his master of laws at the University of Wisconsin.

 

Frank Hodge

Frank Hodge was recently named the next Orin and Janet Smith Dean of the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. A longtime UW professor and a 2014 recipient of the PACCAR Award for Excellence in Teaching, Hodge has chaired the school’s Department of Accounting since 2013, and has served as the faculty athletics representative since 2014. His research interests include how managers disclose and individuals use accounting information to make decisions. Visit his website to learn more. 

 

Jeffrey Riedinger

Jeffrey Riedinger is Vice Provost for Global Affairs at the University of Washington. He has leadership and administrative responsibility for the University’s diverse global programming, including support for international research, study abroad, student and faculty exchanges, and overseas centers. He also serves on the faculty of the University of Washington School of Law, and is a member of the Board of Directors and Vice President for Scholarship and Institutional Strategy for NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

An expert on the political economy of land reform, sustainable agriculture and natural resource management, Vice Provost Riedinger has carried out research in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and the Middle East. He has conducted briefings on foreign aid, land reform and other development issues for members of the White House staff, state department and USAID personnel, members of Congress, the World Bank, non-governmental organizations and private foundations. His publications include two books and more than 30 articles, chapters, reviews and monographs.

Vice Provost Riedinger earned a Juris Doctorate from the UW School of Law as well as master’s and doctoral degrees from Princeton University. He previously served as Dean of International Studies and Programs and faculty member at Michigan State University. He is a native of Washington.

 

Denzil Suite

Dr. Denzil Suite, Vice President for Student Life, joined the University of Washington in July 2013. In that capacity, he provides leadership and direction for strategic planning, assessment, and staff development for a comprehensive division of student programs and services. He leads a team of approximately 1,000 professionals in creating and maintaining a healthy campus environment through services, programs, and innovative learning experiences beyond the classroom, and through a highly collaborative relationship with other senior UW leaders.

Prior to joining UW, he served as Associate Vice President of Student Affairs at the University of Southern California where he had oversight responsibilities for over 20 departments in the division. He also served and as an Associate Professor for Clinical Education at the USC Rossier School of Education. He taught master’s level courses on Student Development, the History of Higher Education, and on Intervention Strategies.

Suite earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology at The Ohio State University, a master’s degree in Education from the University of Vermont, and a Ph.D. in Policy and Organization from the University of Southern California. His research for his doctorate centered on factors affecting student success in college. He is especially interested in how students from differing backgrounds are affected by the college environment. He chose this topic because of his long-standing commitment to college students and their success.

Dr. Suite has worked professionally in student affairs for over 20 years and has held positions of responsibility at UC Berkeley, Cal State L.A., and UC Santa Cruz. He is the recipient of numerous awards from national, local, and student organizations.

He currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors for NASPA—the world’s leading association for Student Affairs professionals.

 

Taipei Host Committee

Arthur Chiao, ’80

Arthur Yu-Cheng Chiao obtained a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.

Mr. Chiao is Chairman and CEO of Winbond Electronics Corp. (1987-present). He was previously also Chairman of Nuvoton Technology Corp. (2008-2019), Walsin Lihwa Electronic Wire & Cable Corp. (1986-1993), Capella Microsystems, Inc. (2007-2014), and Taiwan Electrical & Electronic Manufacturers Association (2007-2013).

Mr. Chiao emphasizes a business philosophy of sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and referencing the concept of “Hidden Champions.” As a result, unique core technologies and competencies were embedded in the success of Winbond and Nuvoton Corp. Both companies have earned numerous national awards in Taiwan, including the Industrial Technology Advancement Award, National Invention Award, and National Award of Excellence. Between 2015 and 2017, Winbond also won the Corporate Governance Evaluation Award from the Taiwan Stock Exchange and was listed as a component stock of the TWSE CG 100 Index. In addition, Nuvoton received the Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Report Award (TCSA).

 

Hung Chang, ’01

Dr. Chang is Deputy Surgeon General of the Military Medical Bureau at Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense and a professor of thoracic surgery at Tri-Service General Hospital. He has held a number of other medical leadership positions, including Deputy Superintendent of Taiwan’s National Defense Medical Center and Chairman of its School of Medicine. He earned his MD at the National Defense Medical Center in 1988.

 

Jon Hodowany, ’03

Jon Hodowany, current UW Taiwan Alumni Chapter president, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from University of California (San Diego), and a doctorate in engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 1997, after graduation, Jon and his wife Judy moved to Seattle to start a career at the Boeing Company, developing simulation software to model and certify parts manufactured with high-speed, highly-automated manufacturing processes. Several years later, he contributed similar technology related to laboratory and factory automation to two biotechnology start-up companies: Rosetta Inpharmatics (later acquired by Merck) and Epigenomics AG in Berlin, Germany. It was during this time that Jon concurrently studied business at the University of Washington, graduating with an MBA from UW’s Foster School of Business in 2003. During the MBA program, he managed joint collaborations between his company (Epigenomics), the UW School of Medicine and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In 2005, Jon moved to Taipei, Taiwan (hometown of his wife, Judy) to lead a Taiwan-based engineering and manufacturing company, JC Grand, as its General Manager, a role that continues to this day. Jon has been an active member of the UW Alumni community in Taiwan for more than 10 years, motivated by the network of outstanding Taiwan-based alumni and the thorough commitment of the University of Washington to deepen ties with the entire Asia Pacific region.

 

Kung-Yee Liang, ’82

Kung-Yee Liang received his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from University of Washington in 1982 and has been a faculty member at the Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University since then for twenty eight years.  He served as the Graduate Program Director for the department from 1996 to 2003.

Liang has served as the Vice President, National Health Research Institutes (NHRI), Taiwan from July, 2003 to August, 2006 and was the Acting President for six months beginning in January, 2006.

In August, 2010, Liang became the sixth President of the National Yang-Ming University, the first medical university in Taiwan. In December, 2017, Liang stepped down from the post to become the sixth President of NHRI and his primary appointment is with the Institute of Population Health Science.

Among the honors and awards, Liang received the Snedecor Award (with Scott Zeger) in 1987 by the American Statistical Association for best publication in biometry for 1986, the Spiegelman Award by the American Public Health Association in 1990 for outstanding accomplishments in the field of health statistics, the Rema Lapouse Award by the American Public Health Association in 2010 for significant contributions to the scientific understanding of the epidemiology and control of mental disorders, the Karl Pearson Prize (with Scott Zeger) in 2015 by the International Statistical Institute for contemporary research contribution that has had profound influence on statistical theory, methodology, practice, and/or applications, and the Heritage Award in 2016 by the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association for outstanding service to the progress of the University over an extended period of time. Liang is the Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1995, the Elected Academician, Academia Sinica, Taiwan in 2002, the Elected Member, Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) in 2012, the Elected Member, the National Academy of Medicine, USA in 2015 and the Elected Member, Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2016.

Liang’s research interest has primarily been on developing new statistical methods for analyzing correlated data derived from longitudinal and genetic epidemiological studies, and on developing statistical theory for inference in the presence of nuisance parameters. Liang is a co-author of the book on “Analysis of Longitudinal Data”, published by the Oxford University Press in 1994 and in 2002 (2^nd edition). He is also the author of the monography on “Generalized Linear Models, Estimating Equations and Multivariate Extensions”, published by the Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica in 1999, as a part of the Invited Lecture Series in Statistical Science.

 

Yi-Bing Lin, ’90

Yi-Bing Lin received his Bachelor’s degree from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, in 1983, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, USA, in 1990. From 1990 to 1995 he was a Research Scientist with Bellcore (Telcordia). He then joined the National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in Taiwan, where he remains. In 2011, Lin became the Vice President of NCTU. Since 2014, Lin has been appointed as the Deputy Minister of Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan. After 2016, he become a lifetime Chair Professor of NCTU.

Lin is also an Adjunct Research Fellow, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Research Center for Information Technology Innovation, Academia Sinica, and a member of board of directors, Chunghwa Telecom. He serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Trans. on Vehicular Technology. He is General or Program Chair for prestigious conferences including ACM MobiCom 2002. He is Guest Editor for several journals including IEEE Transactions on Computers. Lin is the author of the books Wireless and Mobile Network Architecture (Wiley, 2001), Wireless and Mobile All-IP Networks (John Wiley,2005), and Charging for Mobile All-IP Telecommunications (Wiley, 2008). Lin received numerous research awards including 2005 NSC Distinguished Researcher, 2006 Academic Award of Ministry of Education and 2008 Award for Outstanding contributions in Science and Technology, Executive Yuen, 2011 National Chair Award, and TWAS Prize in Engineering Sciences, 2011 (The World Academy of Sciences). He is Chair of IEEE Taipei Section. Lin is AAAS Fellow, ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and IET Fellow.

 

Paul Liu, ’83

Professor Paul C. B. Liu is the Chairman of Cornerstone Intellectual Property Foundation (CIPF), the Emeritus Professor of Chengchi University in Taiwan, and the Co-director of Master of Law-IPR Program of Tsinghua University in China. He is also the Adjunct Professor of University of Washington.

Professor Liu served as the founding Director of the Graduate Institute of Intellectual Property (IIP) and of the Center for Technology Policy and Law at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Prior to the establishment of IIP, Professor Liu served as the Director of the Graduate Institute of Technology and Innovation Management (TIM). Professor Liu served as the advisor of Presidential Science Advisory Council, coordinating many science and technology policies in Taiwan.

Professor Liu founded the Association of Technology Managers in Taiwan (ATMT) in the year of 2002 and served as the first President. He is the former President of Licensing Executives Society Chinese Taipei (2006-2010) and the Vice President for International Relations of Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM)(2008-2010).

Born in Taiwan, Professor Liu has been living in Seattle, for more than 30 years before returning to his homeland. Professor Liu received a Bachelor of Laws from National Taiwan University, Bachelor of Science (in Mathematics), Master of Laws (LL.M.) and Ph.D. in Law respectively from University of Washington. His research ranges from intellectual property, industrial IP management, technology laws and computer laws.

 

Ken Sun, ’00

Ken joined Microsoft Taiwan in September 2017. He comes from Schneider Electric, where he most recently served as Country President of Taiwan. He was responsible for deploying the vision of “Life is On” by driving digital transformation in bringing new levels of operational efficiencies in energy management and automation for buildings, industry, IT and infrastructure sectors.  Prior to Schneider, Ken was with National Instruments for over 14 years in which 9 years he served as the GM of TW.  As a reputable professional, Ken is passionate in leading sales and marketing, developing partners, and building operational teams in delivering long-term growth and profitability for employees, partners and customers. Ken graduated from University of Washington, with a B.S degree in Electrical Engineering.

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