At the Congregation 2024 held today (2 June), the University of Macau (UM) presented the Teaching Excellence Award to one faculty member in recognition of his outstanding teaching performance. The recipient for the 2023/2024 academic year is Wong Fai, associate professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science of the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST).
Every year, the recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award is selected by a selection committee from nominees, who are faculty-level teaching award recipients, through a rigorous process. Selection criteria include the following: teaching philosophy, depth of knowledge in the subject area, outstanding communication skills and teaching effectiveness, outstanding contributions to the quality of curriculum development, the ability to promote student learning by stimulating and sustaining the intellectual development of students, innovative approach to teaching and learning, and leadership in promoting teaching excellence within and outside the university.
Prof Wong felt honoured to receive the award and expressed his gratitude to the university for the recognition. He is committed to curriculum reform, educational innovation, and the promotion of professional certifications. Regarding his teaching approach, Prof Wong implements research-based methods that integrate theoretical knowledge with practical applications, enabling students to apply their knowledge flexibly. Furthermore, Prof Wong promotes self-directed learning to empower students to take control of their education, thus developing their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Prof Wong believes that a good teacher should not only facilitate students’ academic development, but also nurture them into responsible citizens who can make achievements beyond the classroom and make active contributions to society.
Prof Wong joined UM in 1998 as a research fellow in FST. He obtained both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UM, and earned his PhD from Tsinghua University. With research interests encompassing natural language processing, machine translation, computational linguistics, and machine learning. Prof Wong has published over 170 academic papers. His significant contributions to the field have been recognised with the Second Prize in the Technological Invention Award and the Second Prize in the Science and Technology Progress Award of the Macao Science and Technology Award, which he received in 2022 and 2012 respectively. The research projects supervised by Prof Wong have also received awards in competitions in Macao and the Asia-Pacific region. He was also awarded the Teaching Excellence Award by FST for the 2023/2024 academic year. One of Prof Wong’s notable achievements is the development of a pioneering Portuguese-Chinese machine translation system. He currently serves as the head of the Natural Language Processing & Portuguese-Chinese Machine Translation Laboratory (NLP2CT Lab) at UM.
