Victor On-kwok Li

Timeline

1. 1977–1981

   Degrees at MIT

   Born and raised in Hong Kong, he earns an S.B. in 1977, an S.M. in 1979, an E.E. degree in 1980 and an Sc.D. in 1981 in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. Wilbur Davenport is his doctoral adviser.

2. 1981–1997

   Professor at USC

   He joins the University of Southern California in February 1981 and becomes Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the USC Communication Sciences Institute. From 1987 to 1989, he chairs the Computer Communications Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society.

3. 1997–2018

   Chair Professor at HKU

   He moves to the University of Hong Kong in September 1997 as Chair Professor of Information Engineering. He serves as Associate Dean of Engineering from 2007 to 2012 and as Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering from 2012 to 2018.

4. 2001

   Bronze Bauhinia Star

   He receives the Bronze Bauhinia Star from the Government of Hong Kong in 2001.

5. 2015–2017

   Co-founding Fano Labs

   In 2015, he co-founds Fano Labs, a University of Hong Kong spin-off for speech and natural language processing, with Miles Wen. In November 2017, Horizons Ventures leads its Series Pre-A round. The company's technology covers Cantonese, Sichuanese, English and Mandarin and analyses recorded call-center conversations.

6. 2018

   Air pollution research grant

   In January 2018, a team he co-leads with Jacqueline Lam wins an RGC Theme-based Research Project to develop deep learning models for personalized and smart air pollution monitoring and health management. The project is funded at HKD 50 million over five years and brings together HKU, Cambridge, HKUST, Tsinghua and UC Berkeley/UCLA.

7. 2021–2024

   NAM Healthy Longevity Catalyst Awards

   The HKU team he leads with Jacqueline Lam wins the US National Academy of Medicine Healthy Longevity Catalyst Award in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. The 2024 project applies a large language model to speech-based prediction of late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

8. As of October 2026

   Emeritus professor and Fano chairman

   He is Emeritus Professor at HKU, where his Chair Professorship of Information Engineering spans September 1997 to June 2025. He is Chairman and Co-Founder of Fano, the speech recognition and natural language processing company.