PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Sam Kwong

Also known as Sam Tak Wu Kwong, 鄺得互

Sam Kwong is a computer scientist at Lingnan University in Hong Kong whose work spans evolutionary computation, video coding and AI-based image enhancement. He worked at Control Data Canada from 1985 to 1987, earned a doctorate at Fernuniversität Hagen in 1996, and headed the Department of Computer Science at City University of Hong Kong from 2012 to 2018. IEEE elevated him to Fellow in 2014; he coauthored the Underwater Image Enhancement Benchmark paper in 2019 and the Zero-DCE low-light method in 2020, and served as president of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society from 2022 to 2023. In 2023 he joined Lingnan and was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors; the Canadian Academy of Engineering followed in 2025 and the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada in 2026. At Lingnan he is Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research), Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence.

Works
935
Citations
39,980
h-index
92
Rankings
#79 by cited papers
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1985–1996

    A doctorate at Hagen

    He works as a diagnostic engineer at Control Data Canada from 1985 to 1987. In 1996, he earns a Dr.-Ing. at Fernuniversität Hagen under Wolfgang A. Halang, with a dissertation titled An Automatic Recognition System for Chinese Speech.

  2. 1990–2018

    Lecturer to head at CityU

    He becomes a lecturer in the Department of Electronic Engineering at City University of Hong Kong in 1990 and later a Chair Professor in its Department of Computer Science. From 2012 to 2018, he serves as head of the Computer Science department.

  3. 2014

    An IEEE Fellowship

    In 2014, while at City University of Hong Kong, he is elevated to IEEE Fellow for contributions to optimization techniques in cybernetics and video coding.

  4. 2019–2020

    Underwater and low-light enhancement

    In 2019, he is among the authors of An Underwater Image Enhancement Benchmark Dataset and Beyond, which builds a benchmark of 950 real-world underwater images, 890 of them with reference images. In 2020, he coauthors Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation (Zero-DCE), a deep-network method for low-light image enhancement that trains without paired or unpaired data.

  5. 2021–2023

    Leading the IEEE SMC Society

    He is president-elect of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society in 2021 and serves as its president from January 2022 to December 2023.

  6. 2023

    Lingnan chair and NAI fellowship

    In 2023, he joins Lingnan University as Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence and Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research). He is elected to the 2023 class of Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors and to the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences for 2023.

  7. 2025–2026

    Canadian fellowships and paper awards

    In 2025, he is elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the IEEE Signal Processing Society gives its 2025 Best Paper Award to the underwater image enhancement benchmark paper he coauthored. In 2026, he is elected to the Class of 2026 Fellows of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada, and Learning-Aided Evolution for Optimization, which he coauthored, receives the 2026 IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation Outstanding Paper Award.

  8. As of October 2026

    Graduate dean at Lingnan

    He is Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research), Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and J.K. Lee Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence at Lingnan University. Since February 2026, he is principal investigator of an Innovation and Technology Commission project on satellite image recognition and typhoon intensity forecasting with artificial intelligence.

Career

  1. Since 2023Lingnan UniversityChair Professor of Computational Intelligence; Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research)
  2. 2014–2023City University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen Research Institute
  3. 1990–2018City University of Hong KongLecturer, Head of the Computer Science department
  4. 1985–1987Control Data CanadaDiagnostic engineer

Education

  1. 1996University of HagenDr.-Ing.

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancement2020 · IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · 2,604 citationsWith Chen Change Loy
  2. An Underwater Image Enhancement Benchmark Dataset and Beyond2019 · IEEE Transactions on Image Processing · 2,398 citationsWith Dacheng Tao
  3. An Evolutionary Many-Objective Optimization Algorithm Based on Dominance and Decomposition2014 · IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation · 1,208 citationsWith Kalyanmoy Deb and Qingfu Zhang
  4. Gbest-guided artificial bee colony algorithm for numerical function optimization2010 · Applied Mathematics and Computation · 1,180 citations
  5. Genetic algorithms: concepts and applications [in engineering design]1996 · IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics · 1,111 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Sam Kwong. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes City University of Hong Kong. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes City University of Hong Kong. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes City University of Hong Kong. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Sam Kwong yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Hall of Honour - IEEE SMC ieeesmc.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Sam Kwong - The Mathematics Genealogy Project mathgenealogy.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. 香港城市大学San Kwong讲席教授给我院师生做学术报告 cse.seu.edu.cn. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Professor Sam KWONG Tak Wu | Office of the President ln.edu.hk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Sam Kwong - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. An Underwater Image Enhancement Benchmark Dataset and Beyond arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancement arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. A hundred top scholars join Lingnan - Lingnan Touch | Lingnan University ln.edu.hk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. Top Lingnan University scientist Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu elected Fellow of the 2023 National Academy of Inventors - Press Release | Lingnan University ln.edu.hk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  10. Top Lingnan scientist Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu elected Fellow of the 2023 National Academy of Inventors and Fellow of HKAES - Lingnan Touch | Lingnan University ln.edu.hk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  11. Lingnan AI expert Prof Sam Kwong elected Fellow of Royal Society of Canada One of only three scholars in Hong Kong to receive the honour this year bastillepost.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  12. Sam Tak Wu KWONG - Lingnan Scholars scholars.ln.edu.hk. Checked 20 October 2026.