Keynote Speakers
Erin Cho, Ph.D.
Dean and Professor of the School of Fashion and Textiles at
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Erin Cho is the Inaugural Executive Dean and Professor of the School of Fashion and Textiles at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. SFT had existed under its engineering school for over 65 years. As of Fall 2022, the university spun it out and established it as an independent school to exploit the growing demands and new opportunities in fashion.
Dean Cho received her BA and MA degrees from Seoul National University in Korea. She finished her Ph.D. degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. She has over 25 years of experience in academia across different institutions. In particular, Dean Cho possesses extensive management experience. Before joining PolyU, she was a tenured full professor of design strategies at the Parsons School of Design (Parsons) at The New School, New York, where she progressed steadily into a leadership position over the past years. She was appointed Faculty Director of Parsons Executive Education and Partnerships in 2013, moved up to Executive Director of Executive Education in 2017, and assumed her role as Dean of the School for Undergraduate Studies at The New School in 2020. She was the first Asian Dean in over 100 years of the university’s history.
She is also a highly regarded scholar whose research is situated in the intersections between design, management, and technology in the areas of fashion, branding, e-commerce platform and digital innovation, design strategies, and entrepreneurship. She has built a prolific research profile alongside an extensive record of corporate consulting and engagement. Many noted academic and industry associations had invited Professor Cho to deliver keynote addresses including Adobe Max, the Digital Leaders’ Forum, Tsinghua University Executive Education Alumni Conference, Fashion Executive Talks in Seoul, the Sensory and Neuromarketing Conference, the Design and Management Society, etc. Professor Cho's work has been widely adopted by companies in organizing innovation teams and projects, and she has given numerous executive seminars and training to numerous global corporations. She served as an advisor for notable incubators and venture funding boards, such as National Retail Federation, XRC lab, Impact Entrepreneurship, E-lab, Emotional Engineering Lab, etc.
Delman Lee, Ph.D.
Vice Chair, TAL Apparel Limited
Dr. Delman Lee is currently the Vice Chair of TAL Apparel Limited. He leads TAL Apparel on its long-term strategy and continuous innovations in various aspects of the business. Major focuses are digital transformation, disruptive technologies, business model innovations and sustainability. He is responsible for the innovative services of TAL such as Vendor Managed Inventory and leads the sustainability journey of TAL for the past 15+ years. Dr. Lee holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Imperial College, London. Dr. Lee possesses extensive experience in information technology and management in global operations. He also has a strong background in research. Dr. Lee is also a board member of Sustainable Apparel Coalition and the Chairman of HKMA Hong Kong Sustainability Committee.
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About TAL Apparel Limited
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One of the world's largest and most admired apparel manufacturers, TAL Apparel produces shirts, blouses, knits, pants, outerwear and suits for many of the most famous garment brands. Headquartered in Hong Kong, TAL Apparel has factories and offices in 7 countries and a workforce that is more than 26,000 strong. Since 1983, TAL Apparel has sold over 1,000,000,000 garments. Today, 1 out of every 6 dress shirts sold in the U.S. is manufactured by TAL Apparel! As a tireless innovator, TAL Apparel invents numerous quality products including pucker-free and wrinkle-free shirts, together with advanced water repellent and water management technologies. Long term investment in R&D has enabled TAL Apparel to innovate almost every aspect of garment manufacturing.
Prof. Calvin Wong
Chief Executive Officer & Centre Director, AiDLab
Cheng Yik Hung Professor in Fashion,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Prof. Calvin Wong is currently the Centre Director of Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence in Design (AiDLab), a research platform established by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Royal College of Art (RCA) in the UK, and is funded by the HKSAR Government under the InnoHK Research Clusters. Calvin’s leading role brings together cutting-edge research by practitioners and scholars of both institutions to establish a new AI creative innovation cluster in the region.
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Calvin is a trailblazer in the application of AI innovations within the context of the fashion industry for design, manufacturing, and retail. Ranked among the world's top 2% of most-cited scientists in the field of “Artificial intelligence & Image Processing”, he has been bridging academia and industry with his cutting-edge research since 2010. Calvin and his team are building new intelligent systems to disrupt the fashion industry. In 2022, he has developed the world’s first designer-led AI system, named “AI based Interactive Design Assistant for Fashion” system (AiDA). AiDA is embedded with AI based image recognition, detection, and generation technologies. It assists the designer to streamline their creative process and facilitates their inspiration by automatically generating original collections based on their unique inspirations and thus speeds up ideation. A “AI x Fashion” show at M+ Museum Hong Kong showcased 80 outfits to demonstrate the outcomes of international f aashion brand and designers working with AiDA and attracted over 120 local and international media coverage, including VOGUE, BBC News, The Times, MIT Technology Review, etc. AiDA being featured in WGSN Big Ideas Report 2025 (Fashion) demonstrates its’ influential role in the future development of fashion industry.
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In 2019, his worked with Alibaba Group to establish the first-of-its-kind “Fashion AI Dataset”, which improves the accuracy of online searches for fashion images impacting the shopping experiences of millions of users on the platform.
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Calvin was recognised as one of the Ten New Innovators by the Fashion for Good Global Initiative 2021. His inventions have received numerous accolades including two Grand Awards and a Gold Medal with the Congratulations at the 47th International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva. Calvin’s work has been extensively featured in the media such as Associated Press, Televisión Española, TV Tokyo and MediaCorp Singapore.
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With a passion to bring research into real world contexts, his success in AI applications is supported by his work derived from his publications of more than 160 high impact journals in SCI journals including influential publications such as IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS), IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, etc. Calvin is frequently invited to deliver plenary, and keynote presentations and chaired the world’s first conference on the integration of fashion and artificial intelligence, the “Artificial Intelligence on Fashion and Textile International Conference 2018” (co-organised by the Alibaba Group and the UK's Textile Institute), and the 12th International Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) 2023.