Samuel Wanhei Chan, Member of Advisory Board
Samuel Wanhei Chan graduated from Guangzhou South China Institute of Technology (now South China University of Technology) in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in engineering. After graduation, he moved to Macau and engaged in education in his early years. He taught mathematics, electronics, computing, and other subjects, and also worked as an information technology consultant. He joined the Macau Government in 1989 and was appointed as the Chief of Division of Organization and Information of the Education and Youth Bureau in 1996. In 2003, he joined the Administration and Civil Service Bureau as the Senior Advisor of the Director’s Office. He participated in the SAR Government’s E-Government Working Group and was responsible for policy planning and cross-departmental coordination. He was also working with UNU International Institute of Software Technology (UNU-IIST), the former institute of UNU Macau, for the ambitious E-Macao Project from 2004 to 2007. He also had talks in the International Conference on E-Governance (ice-Gov) organised by UNU-IIST 2008 in Egypt and chaired panel 2013 in Korean.
In 2007, Samuel Chan was appointed as the full-time member of the Administrative Committee of the Macau Science and Technology Fund (FDCT). In 2020, he was nominated as the Chairman of the Administrative Committee and he retired from public service in 2023. He has long been involved in and responsible for the review and approval of funding applications for research projects in the natural sciences and engineering disciplines, and the formulation of various funding schemes. He is particularly involved in formulating the top level science and technology development strategies, overall smart city development plans, and conducting research on major policies. A series of works has had an important impact on the development of science and technology in Macao. Over the past decade or so, Macao has been promoted to the international standards in certain research fields, such as the quality research on traditional Chinese medicine and very large scale integrated circuit design in analog and mixed signals.
During his tenure as the Chairman of FDCT, he first proposed “Leading by Funding", reconstructing the positioning of funding for Macao's scientific and technological development, consolidating the dominant areas of basic research, and promoting the development of research projects towards applications. The second was to adjust and launch new funding schemes to promote industry-university-research cooperation and strengthen the applied research atmosphere. The third was to innovatively propose “Full-Chain Management” of funding, and cooperate with the Science and Technology Evaluation Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology to design an evaluation mechanism suitable for the entire life cycle of general scientific research projects to encourage and support the continued development of projects toward applications.
Also in his tenure, Samuel Chan paid great attention to the issue of equal opportunities in the field of scientific research, and took measures trying to eliminate inequality or discrimination in the field of scientific research in terms of gender, age, experience, work and educational background. In formulating the smart city development plan, he used the Sustainable Development Goals promoted by the United Nations as the core indicators in the plan.
In addition, as an engineer, he has participated in the coordination and cooperation of many important data projects of the SAR government over the years. Especially in 2020 shortly after the out-break of Covid-19, he was the first to innovatively propose the use of block-chain technology to achieve mutual recognition of health codes of Guangdong and Macao, enabling travellers crossing the border to submit the trusted declaration in person. Resolved the problem of differences in personal data protection mechanisms between the two legislation systems, and that allowed the cross-border flow of people and logistics between Mainland China and Macao SAR not interrupted during the entire pandemic, which was likely to be the first case around the world in Covid-19.