Dr Khee Kok Pang, respected and admired by generations of

Dr Khee Kok Pang, respected and admired by generations of Dr Pang Khok Khee Dr Pang Khok Khee, respected and admired by generations of students in electrical and computer systems engineering, has died in Sydney at the age of 67. He was there as an expert witness in a commercial court case and was found dead in his hotel room thon 9 March 2009. Khee was born in Malaysia in 1941, grew up in a large family in Klang and went to school there before travelling to Melbourne to gain his matriculation at Box Hill High. He took the BE course in electrical engineering at Melbourne University where he gained honours. He then embarked on a PhD in electrical engineering in the new and vibrant Monash University under the supervision of the famous Professor Douglas Lampard. He worked on optimal RC networks using some advanced mathematical techniques and including some computing (a rare thing in those days). Following his PhD studies he worked at Telecom Research before travelling to the US for work at Bell Labs and then at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with Ernest Kuh, a legend in the circuit theory field. Whilst at Berkeley he met and married Mae Anna from Canada, then a doctoral student in oriental art at Berkeley. Whilst still at Berkeley Doug Lampard offered Khee a lectureship in electrical engineering back at Monash. He took up this appointment in 1971 and retired from the department in 2005 as a Reader. Khee was a deep thinker and he thought deeply about every subject or topic that he encountered, getting to the nub of the matter but not forgetting the threads that bind things together. This was evident in Khee’s approach to his enormously successful design and teaching of the fundamental circuit and systems subjects at Monash. For decades he taught many students these basic fundamentals of electrical engineering science and our graduates have every reason to be grateful to Khee for the solid grounding they received at his hands. He also taught a number of other subjects over the years, including, in later years, some studies in the area of digital signal processing. In circuit theory and in other areas he prepared sets of notes that became crucial possessions of his students and colleagues! Khee was an outstanding researcher and made valuable contributions in the circuit theory and related areas over the years. He was widely sought as a journal paper referee and PhD thesis examiner. He himself supervised quite a number of outstanding PhD and masters students. These graduates are working in different parts of the world but all are thankful for the years that they spent with Khee and they have great affection and respect for him. No less than three have won the prestigious Douglas Lampard award for the best PhD thesis in their years. During his career at Monash Khee took sabbatical periods at the Stanford Research Institute, Tohoku University in Japan and at the University of Notre Dame. At the beginning of the nineties Khee moved into more commercially oriented research and set up a group to work in the area of video coding. Initially with a GIRD grant he collaborated with Siemens to find better ways to compress video images. With the arrival of Fred Symons from the Telecom Research Labs and the expansion of activities in the communications area this work attracted further funding and further staff. The Centre for Telecommunications and Information Engineering was established and Khee was its leader or deputy leader for many years. At its peak it became part of the Australian Telecommunications Cooperative Research Centre. Towards the end of his full-time work at Monash he listed his interests as video communications, video coding, communication networks, wireless communications, digital signal processing, adaptive filters, circuit theory and systems and microwave circuits. Khee did not always enjoy good health and in 1992 he very nearly passed away with a dissecting aortic aneurism. Luckily a cardiac team was on hand at the Alfred hospital when this happened and he was saved with heroic surgery. He gradually recovered from this episode and was able to resume his full workload in the department. It is interesting that Khee and Mae Anna’s only child Benjamin is on his way to becoming a specialist cardiologist. He always enjoyed the friendship, respect and affection of his colleagues. His knowledge, skills and experience meant that colleagues often referred to him for assistance. He took on administrative roles willingly and contributed greatly to the effective running of the department over the years. But Khee was not just an engineering ‘egghead’. He was always interested in and proud of his Chinese heritage and his enjoyment of Chinese art and culture was enhanced by the expertise of Mae Anna, who since arrival in Melbourne in 1971 has been at the National Gallery of Victoria where she is now the senior curator of oriental art. Khee read widely about Chinese history, art and culture and travelled to China on a number of occasions. He was always willing to invite colleagues and friends to learn more about these areas. He also read widely in other areas of human endeavour, including politics, local and international. thA funeral service was held at Le Pines in Glen Waverley on 13 March. There was a large crowd present including many of Khee’s former students and colleagues. Khee leaves a legacy of research achievements, of teaching quality and of human values that are quite outstanding. He will be sadly missed. Our thoughts are with Mae Anna and Benjamin. Bill Brown and Kim Ng