The Ningbo Camellia Award is the highest honour for foreign talent, recognising their contribution to the social and economic development of the city, whether in business and technology or culture and education. 

Professor Chong is a Malaysian Chinese who fell in love with Ningbo eight years ago, and then embarked on his journey at UNNC. He has magnificent achievements in his profession. As an active member of the information systems community, he has published over 100 articles in various reputable journals, including Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, and European Journal of Operations Research.  

Professor Chong has also been rated as one of the Most Cited Researchers in China for the fifth year running by the Elsevier Scopus database. He was also a recipient of the 2012 Ten Outstanding Young Malaysians Award conferred by Junior Chamber International.

Despite the increasing workload, Professor Chong is still willing to serve as a doctoral supervisor to cultivate students. “I hope to cultivate researchers with confidence and independent thinking, who will have unlimited potential after graduation,” Professor Chong said. 

The PhD education at UNNC was established 11 years ago. As Dean of the Graduate School, Professor Chong has made substantial contributions to the development of UNNC PhD education. UNNC PhD graduates are now active in academia and have continued teaching and doing research at universities and institutes worldwide, with some employed by top universities such as the National University of Singapore, University of Cambridge and Tsinghua University. Meanwhile, more than half PhD graduates have chosen to stay in Ningbo to contribute their skills to the local economy.