Dr. Tremewan was elected as APRU’s 4th Secretary General and took up the role from June 2011. Before heading the APRU International Secretariat, he was the Vice-President/Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social anthropology from the University of Auckland, a master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in political science (on Southeast Asian politics) from the University of Canterbury. He was elected a senior associate member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, in September 1991 from where he published the book The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore (Macmillan and St Martin’s Press, 1994, reprinted 1996). He was a visiting fellow at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 2003 and a visiting professor at Peking University in 2007 – 2008. In 1995 he became the founding director of the New Zealand Asia Institute, which he led until 1999. Previously, he held positions as a senior consultant, executive secretary, and research director for international development organizations based in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo. A specialist on social regulation in Southeast Asia, his research has recently focused on the internationalisation of higher education.

Mr Yan is an industry leader with more than 35 years of experience in the information technology industry.  As the CEO of Cyberport, Mr Yan leads the digital technology flagship focusing on talent cultivation, industry development, and the integration of new and traditional economies.  Prior to joining Cyberport, Mr Yan was the Executive Director and CEO of SUNeVision and had held various senior management positions in large consulting and IT services companies including Accenture, Tradelink and Computer and Technologies.

Mr Yan has been active in public services and is a member of the Election Committee (the Technology and Innovation Subsector). He serves as a member of the Council of the City University and the Hong Kong Metropolitan University. Mr Yan is also a member of the Human Capital Committee of the Financial Services Development Council, a member of the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications, and various industry or professional organisations in the I&T sector.  He also lectures as an Adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Mr Yan holds a BBA Degree from CUHK and was conferred the Honoree of the Year by the CUHK Chapter of Beta Gamma Sigma in 2020, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Hong Kong Computer Society in 2021. He also received Executive Education from the Harvard Business School.

Professor Yang Wang took office as Vice-President for Institutional Advancement of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) on 1 October 2020. He is also a Chair Professor of Mathematics. He joined the HKUST as the Head of the Department of Mathematics in 2014 and he became the Dean of School of Science in 2016.

Professor Wang is an internationally respected scholar with wide ranging research interests, having published over 100 research journal papers in both pure and interdisciplinary mathematics, many of which in top journals. During his tenure as Dean of Science and Head of Mathematics, Prof Wang founded the HKUST Big Data Institute and launched the popular Big Data Technology MSc program.

Professor Wang received his Bachelor degree in Mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1983 and obtained his PhD degree in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1990.  He started his academic career with the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1989 and then moved on to be the Department Chair and Professor of Mathematics at Michigan State University in 2007. He was also a Program Director at the National Science Foundation between 2006 and 2007.

Lik-Hang Lee received a Ph.D. degree from SyMLab, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the Bachelor’s and M.Phil. degrees from the University of Hong Kong. He is currently an assistant professor (tenure-track) with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea, and the head of the Augmented Reality and Media Laboratory, KAIST. He has built and designed various human-centric computing specializing in augmented and virtual realities (AR/VR).

Carlos Astengo-Noguez is a Mathematician with a Master’s Degree in Applied Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence. He is the former Educational Innovation and Research Office Director and National Director for the faculty development and educational innovation center at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico.
His research topics include Multiagent, Systems, ML, Pathfinding, Flock Traffic Navigation, Teaching /Learning Techniques, Gamification, and recent Neuroscience-based metrics. Carlos is an active member of the Monterrey Interactive Media & Entertainment Cluster (MIMEC) and participates actively at the APRU E-Sports working groups.

Professor Pan Hui is a Chair Professor of Computational Media and Arts and Director of the Center for Metaverse and Computational Creativity at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of Academia Europaea, an IEEE Fellow, and an ACM Distinguished Scientist. He is also the Nokia Chair in Data Science at the University of Helsinki. He received his PhD from the Computer Laboratory at University of Cambridge, and both his Bachelor and MPhil degrees from the University of Hong Kong. He was an adjunct Professor of social computing and networking at Aalto University, Finland, and a Distinguished Scientist at the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories (T-labs), Germany. His industrial profile also includes his research at Intel Research Cambridge, UK and Thomson Research Paris, France. Professor Hui is a world-leading expert in Augmented Reality and Mobile Computing, with more than 400 research papers, 30 patents, and over 23,000 citations. He has founded and chaired many IEEE/ACM conferences/workshops, and has served as track chair, senior program committee member, organising committee member, and program committee member of numerous top conferences including ACM WWW, ACM SIGCOMM, ACM MobiSys, ACM MobiCom, ACM CoNext, IEEE Infocom, IEEE PerCom, IEEE ICNP, IEEE ICDCS, IJCAI, AAAI, UAI, and ICWSM. He served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, and as guest editor for various journals including IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) and IEEE Transactions on Secure and Dependable Computing. He also served on the IEEE Computer Society Fellow Evaluation Committee.

Ms. Etta Wong is currently the Director of Hong Kong Int’l Office, University of Southern California

She has over 20 years of working experience in both the education and business sectors. Prior to joining USC, she was the Head of MBA Programs (student development and international programs) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

During her work in higher education, Etta has been broadly supporting students and young professionals from different nationalities, backgrounds, and cultures.  Recently she designs a program that applies design thinking to life and career planning.

Etta recently completed the Teaching and Learning Studio program at Stanford’s d.school.  She received her bachelor’s at University of Wisconsin-Madison and her master’s at HKUST.

Yeon-Jin (YJ) Shin (she/her) Rutgers Esports Human Resources Director 2020, OWL 2020 NYXL Homestand PRC with Tespa, 2022 PRC Overwatch League with Blizzard

Jim Huntley is a Marketing and Brand Management Executive with over 25 years of experience leading teams across multiple industries. After graduating from Northwestern University’s Masters of Marketing Communications program, he joined General Mills where he managed marketing and promotions on Betty Crocker Products, Lucky Charms, and Cheerios. He followed that with a stint at Nestle before transitioning into the toy industry and spending 4 years at Mattel, working on brands as varied as Hot Wheels, Barbie, He-Man, Max Steel, and Justice League. His success on Barbie brought him to MGA to work as their VP of marketing on their Bratz line, then transitioned into video games by taking a role at THQ. In his almost 5 years there, he served as Marketing VP on their kids products (SpongeBob, Disney’s Cars, Wall-E), and T/M rated titles like MX vs ATV, Space Marine, Homefront, UFC 2010, WWE, and Darksiders 1 & 2. He most recently relaunched the SodaStream brand in the US with a business transforming TV spot that is now being used globally, and is currently consulting for a variety of companies in the toy, consumer products, and gaming industries. He is also a Professor in the USC Games program at the University of Southern California.

Kathy Chiang is a veteran of the collegiate esports space, starting as a student organizer in 2012. Her experience with the grassroots scene led to an internship at Riot Games before she joined the Esports department at the University of California, Irvine as Assistant Director to develop the first official esports program at a public institution in 2016. Currently, she serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Voice of Intercollegiate Esports (VOICE).

Nyle Sky Kauweloa received a PhD degree from the University of Hawaii’s Communication and Information Sciences program. Broadly, his research interests are at the intersection of technology, society, and gaming. His dissertation work is an ethnographic study of the still-emerging scene of college esports in the United States, which included his doing fieldwork at the University of California, Irvine. His most recent writing on esports is a book chapter (“The Emergence of College Esports in North America”) for Global esports: Transformation of Cultural Perceptions of Competitive Gaming (2021). Outside of research, Mr. Kauweloa serves on the board of the Electronic Gaming Federation (a collection of 40 Division-1 colleges with esports programmatic investments), and the newly launched VOICE, a non-profit of college esports leadership in higher education.

Dion Goh has a PhD in computer science. He is currently Associate Professor with Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), where is the Associate Chair for Graduate and Continuing Education in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. His major areas of research are in gamification techniques for shaping user perceptions and motivating behavior, mobile information sharing and seeking, and crowdsourcing. Dion has led a number of funded projects in the use of gamification in mobile content sharing, the use of games for mental health interventions, human computation games for data analytics, mobile tagging, and collaborative querying

Mr LAM was born and raised in Hong Kong with severe Special Education Needs (SEN). Being different in a conventional classroom context, he has suffered from ongoing discrimination and bullying throughout his childhood. With a strong sense of determination and persistence, thereafter, he managed to admit to HKU despite his personal struggles and learning difficulties.

Upon admission to HKU, Mr LAM realised the importance of equal opportunities in Education and hence determined to make a difference by helping students with SENs. Mr LAM started his business in a very small Tong Fong (Subdivided Unit) in Kennedy Town, where he witnessed the needs of SEN students and their families, which made him more determined to serve the disadvantaged and the underprivileged.

Being requested by the school to see a language therapist in primary school due to the fact that Mr LAM couldn’t even speak “I go to school by bus” in Cantonese as an 8-years-old. Mr LAM is now a polyglot with proficiency in 6 languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese and a little bit of French. With his linguistic talent and charming personality, before his graduation, he had been offered a job with a potential annual salary of 1 million RMB in a multinational gaming company in China after an internship.

Much tempted by the offer, Mr LAM decided to give up pursuing money and power in the multinational, trying his very best in helping the disadvantaged in a very humble place and started Sallux Education with his former students while studying at the UST for his master’s degree in Technology Leadership and Entrepreneurship, a new master programme offered by the ISD department in UST which incorporate MBA teachings with Engineering training.

Sallux Education is currently one of the industry-leading SEN gamification specialists in Hong Kong, partnering with universities and gamification experts to provide SEN-tailored education services in local schools and educational institutes. By using the latest technologies of VR and NFTs in the education sector, Sallux Education has positioned itself as a leading EdTech pioneer in the metaverse.

Dr Yupei Zhao (PhD in University of Leicester, UK) is an “Hundred Talent Program Young Professor” and doctorial tutor in college of Media and International Culture in Zhejiang University. She is currently vice chair-elected of International Communication Association Popular Media and Culture Division, vice dean of Chinese Society for Science and Technology Jounalism in Game and eSports Communication Research Professionals. Co-founder of UK-China Media and Communication Association. Before joining ZJU, she was working as a senior research associate in school of Communciation and Design in Sun Yat-sen University. Meanwhile, Yupei Zhao has been invited as senior researcher in Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies, China Policy institute at University of Nottingham (UK), and the Eurasian Sport Industry at Emlyon’s Shanghai Campus, visiting professor in Xi’an-Liverpool University and Beijing Institute of Technology.

Her research interests widely includes mixed-methods use to examine digital culture and platformalization, global communication, media culture and industry. Particurly, she pays more attentions on eSports culture and industry, digital music and culture, fandom culture, media and platformalization. She has a PhD and MA focusing on Political Communication and New Media in University of Leicester (UK) since 2010 to 2016. Thus far, she is PI for twelve research funding projects, and her research has appeared in International Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Cultural Economy, International Journal of Communication, Social Science Quarterly, Sage Open, Social media + Society, Media International Australia, popular music and society etc. She got “The Best Paper” Paper Award in both 2020 and 2019 International Communication Association Popular Media and Culture Division, and 2019 European Association for Sport Management.

Patrick Williams (PhD) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His primary areas of research are culture and identity, wherein he splits his time between the study of subcultural identity and authenticity on the one hand, and game-related experiences and identities on the other. Among his many publications, he has authored and edited several books on culture, identity and/or games, including Gaming as Culture: Essays in Social Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games(2006), Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts(2011), and Studies on the Social Construction of Identity and Authenticity (2020). His current research focuses on the significance of DIY culture and identity in the growth of esports in Singapore.

Hey folks! My name is Trevor Nguyen, and I’m a recent graduate from the University of Washington… Go Dawgs! Since graduation, I’ve been focusing on doing what makes me happy and taking small steps towards my goals. One of those goals is to be more confident in myself. Fortunately, I was blessed with a position at the new UW Esports program, in which I worked as an outreach coordinator. I used this opportunity to seek genuine connections with the student campus, strengthening my communication skills. My job entailed branding myself as the “Face of UW Esports”, and I fulfilled that responsibility by planning, advertising, and emceeing Esport events for the student community. I oversaw the marketing and even learned video editing so that I could communicate event information in my own stylish way—the people love me! In conclusion, I’ve had this thought that Collegiate Esports needs to be more localized. Having been in conversations with the student life and even competing in collegiate Overwatch has made me realize that the typical four years you spend in University are supposed to be filled with meaningful experiences. Realistically, seeking a professional contract after competing in collegiate esports is just not practical for everyone. Therefore, my mission was to create an environment in which Esports felt like it mattered. Students are more likely to cheer for local talent anyways! Thus, I hypothesize that the real magic— the real community begins when we put more effort into creating our own superstars.

James Yuen is a final year student majoring in marketing at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and is a former Hong Kong Wushu representative. As the awardee of the HKUST Sportman of the Year for two consecutive years, coupled with his passion and dedication for his sport, James is committed to promoting sports and culture to a wider community through innovation. With a belief in the digital economy, he is keen to explore the application of NFTs and the Metaverse. James is the community manager for Kung Fu Warriors NFT, and he is currently looking into gamification and tokenomics for the project.