He graduated with a B.S. in computer engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1975, an M.S. in computer engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1976, an M.B.A. from Golden Gate University in San Francisco in 1985, and a Ph.D. in computing at the University of Sunderland in the U.K. in 1993. He gained 12 years' data-processing experience in the United States before returning to Hong Kong in 1987 to be an academic. His main research area is database technology, and he has obtained two Hong Kong patents in database reengineering and interoperability. He is the founder-chairman of the Hong Kong Web Society and the Sybase Hong Kong User Group and was also the chairman of the Hong Kong Computer Society Database Special Interest Group.