Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1995

ikigai 一 a Japanese term meaning 'that which most makes one's life seem worth living'. He completed his doctoral dissertation in 1993, and spent the next year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. He came to The Chinese University of Hong Kong in August 1994. Dr. Mathew's research will be published by the University of California Press in January 1996 as Reasons to Hope: How Japanese and Americans Pursue Lives That Seem Worth Living. His ikigai, meanwhile, is balanced between work and wife, research and family, learning all he can about Hong Kong, and savouring life here. Dr. L i Duan Senior Lecturer in Systems Engineering and Engineering Management Dr. Li Duan graduated from the Department of Physics at Fudan University in China in 1977, received his ME in automatic control from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1982, and obtained his Ph.D. in systems engineering from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA, in 1987. Before 1983 Dr. Li had worked as an assistant engineer in the Shanghai Institute of Process Automation Instrumentation, and as a lecturer at the Institute of Systems Engineering at the Shanghai Jiaotong University. Between 1987 and 1994, he was on the faculty of the Department of Systems Engineering at the University of Virginia, USA, serving concurrently as associate director of the University's Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems from 1992 to 1994. Dr. Li's primary research interests have been the theoretical and practical aspects of optimization and control. His current research is focussed on the development of efficient solution schemes for nonconvex and inseparable optimization problems, multiobjective decision analysis, applied probability and statistics, and risk management. His academic achievements are well illustrated in his 47 publications in archival journals, encyclopaedias and edited book volumes. Dr. Li has served as a prinicipal investigator over the past seven years on various research projects funded by the US National Science Foundation, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and other government agencies, private foundations and industries in the USA. Dr. Li is a senior member of IEEE. He is on the editorial board of Control-Theory and Advanced T e c h n o l o g y , MITA Press, and of Information and Decision Technologies, North-Holland. Dr. Li is married to Xiuying Lu. They have three sons — Bowen, Kevin, and Andrew. In his leisure time, Dr. Li enjoys jogging and playing ping- pong. Dr. Richard S.T. Tay Lecturer in Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics Dr. Tay obtained a BS in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University in 1985, an MS in engineering economic systems from Stanford University in 1986, and a Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University in 1990. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the Chartered Institute of Transport, and the Marketing Institute of Singapore. Prior to joining The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dr. Tay taught at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore from 1990 to 1994. He was a visiting scholar at the Sloan School of Management in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992-93. Dr. Tay's research interests include applied microeconomics, applied econometrics, transportation economics and demand modelling. He has published many articles in internationaljournals ,and has consulted for several multinational corporations and government organizations in Singapore. Profiles 38