Keynote Speakers

Professor Dr. Rajan Nataraajan

Dr. Nataraajan is the executive editor of the well-known journal Psychology & Marketing. He is a long standing professor with a myriad academic accomplishments and international engagements to his credit. He was Professor of Marketing and Director of Consumer Economics, Torchmark Professor and Chairman of the Marketing department, and interim-chairman of the Economics department at Auburn University, U.S.A. He is a visiting professor at the Business School at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. He has, to his credit, numerous refereed publications in various academic outlets. Rajan currently sits on the editorial boards of seven other academic journals, including the Journal of Business Research and the Journal of Research for Consumers, and does consulting projects from time to time. Over the years, he has received numerous awards, honors, and accolades pertaining to his role as an academic. At the 2009 Society for Consumer Psychology Conference in San Diego, he and his co-authors received the C.W. Park Inaugural Award for outstanding contribution to the field of consumer psychology as evidenced by their article in a 2006 issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology. He is also the Chair of the Board of Governors of GIKA (Global Innovation and Knowledge Academy). His most recent international engagements include a visit to Justus Liebig University in Germany as an invited doctoral professor and a visit to the HQ of Hyundai, Inc. in South Korea as an invited speaker.

Professor Dr. T.C. Edwin Cheng

T.C. Edwin Cheng is Dean of PolyU Business School, Fung Yiu King - Wing Hang Bank Professor in Business Administration, and Chair Professor of Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He obtained a B.Sc.[Eng] (first class honors) from the University of Hong Kong; an M.Sc. from the University of Birmingham, U.K.; and a Ph.D. and an Sc.D. from the University of Cambridge, U.K. He has previously taught in Canada, England, and Singapore. Prof. Cheng’s research interests are in Operations Management and Operations Research. He has published over 700 SCI/SSCI papers in such journals as California Management Review, Journal of Operations Management, Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Operations Research, Organization Science, and Production and Operations Management. He has co-authored 14 books published by Chapman and Hall, McGraw-Hill, and Springer. He received the Outstanding Young Engineer of the Year Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers, USA, in 1992 and the Croucher Award (the top research award in Hong Kong) in 2001. He was elected Academician of The International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences in 2016. He was named one of the “most cited scientists” in All Fields, in Business and Economics, in Computer Science, and in Engineering over the period 2008-2018 by the ISI Web of Science in 2018. According to Google Scholar, he has received over 32,000 citations and his h-index is 86. A registered professional engineer and a seasoned management consultant, Prof. Cheng has over the years secured more than HK$50 million in research funding from both public and private sectors to support his diverse research programmes.