Bing Luo, assistant professor of data and computational science at Duke Kunshan University, has been awarded the Clare Hall Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cambridge.
“I was excited when I learned I had been selected,” Luo said. “It’s an honor to join a community where so many distinguished scholars have conducted their research.”
Clare Hall, one of Cambridge’s most international and research-focused colleges, is known for its interdisciplinary academic community and strong tradition of scholarship. Its visiting fellowship program is highly competitive and emphasizes academic contribution. Among its distinguished members are several Nobel laureates, including John Clarke, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Luo’s research explores how distributed and device-based computing can be used to protect data while enabling collaboration across different platforms. His team created FedKit, a cross-platform system for privacy-conscious data analysis on mobile devices, built on Flower, an open-source framework widely used for secure collaborative computing.
“This project extends my ongoing research at DKU,” he said. “We developed FedKit and FedCampus, and last year one of my students and I presented these systems at Cambridge, laying the foundation for this collaboration.”
During the fellowship, Luo will work with professors at Cambridge to examine new methods for lightweight, on-device computing that balance efficiency, energy and privacy.
Luo expressed gratitude to DKU for approving his Pre-Tenure Sabbatical (PTS), which allows pre-tenure faculty to pursue high-impact international research.
“The PTS made it possible for me to fully dedicate myself to this collaboration,” he said. “Without the university’s support, it would have been very difficult to focus on such a cross-institutional project.”
Many of Luo’s projects also involve undergraduates, reflecting DKU’s emphasis on faculty-led research as a hallmark of its liberal arts education.
“I hope to create opportunities for them to work directly with Cambridge researchers, perhaps through internships or joint summer research,” he said.
Offering advice to young researchers, Luo encouraged students to start early and persist.
“No need to wait until you feel ready,” he said. “Take advantage of DKU’s supportive environment, seize every opportunity, and give your best once you commit. Every effort counts. It may not pay off immediately, but it will in the long run.”
