Prof. Cao is currently the Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science and the Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing in the Department of Computing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), Hong Kong. He is also the Dean of Graduate School, the director of Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence of Things (RIAIoT) in PolyU, the director of the Internet and Mobile Computing Lab (IMCL) . He was the founding director and now the associate director of PolyU's University's Research Facility in Big Data Analytics (UBDA). He served the department head from 2011 to 2017. Prof. Cao is a member of Academia Europaea, a fellow of IEEE, a fellow of China Computer Federation (CCF), and an ACM distinguished member.

Prof. Cao’s research interests include distributed systems and blockchain, wireless sensing and networking, big data and machine learning, and mobile cloud and edge computing. He published 5 co-authored and 9 co-edited books, and over 500 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings. He also obtained 16 patents. Prof. Cao received many awards for his outstanding research achievements, including the PolyU President Award for Excellent Performance / Achievement in Research and Scholarly Activities, Ministry of Education Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards – Natural Science (Second Class), China Computer Federation (CCF) Overseas Outstanding Contribution Award, IEEE TCCLD Research Innovation Award, Hong Kong ICT Awards: Best Innovation & Research - Certificate of Merit and Special Mention, Bronze Medal Award of Brussels Innova, CVIC SE Software Talent Award, Ministry of Education Nominated State Science and Technology Award (First Class), National Science and Technology Progress Award (Second Class), and best paper awards from Blocksys 2021, IEEE Trans. Industrial Informatics 2018, IEEE DSAA 2017, IEEE SMARTCOMP 2016, IEEE/IFIP EUC 2016, IEEE ISPA 2013, IEEE WCNC 2011, etc. Prof. Cao has delivered over 50 keynote speeches / invited talks.

Prof. Cao has directed and participated in over 130 research and development projects and, as a principal investigator, obtained over HK$70 million grants from funding agencies such as National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Ministry of Science and Technology of P. R. China (MOST), Hong Kong Research Grant Council (RGC), Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC), The Society of Hong Kong Scholars, and industries and organizations like Alibaba, IBM, Nokia, HK Jockey Club and Hong Kong Construction Industry Council.

Prof. Cao served the Chair of the Technical Committee on Distributed Computing of IEEE Computer Society 2012-2014, a member of IEEE Fellows Evaluation Committee of the Computer Society and the Reliability Society, a member of IEEE Computer Society Education Awards Selection Committee, a member of IEEE Communications Society Awards Committee, and a member of Steering Committee of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. Prof. Cao has also served as chairs and members of organizing and technical committees of many international conferences, including IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE PERCOM, IEEE IoTDI, IEEE ICPADS, IEEE CLOUDCOM, SRDS and OPODIS, and as associate editor and member of the editorial boards of many international journals, including IEEE TC, IEEE TPDS, IEEE TBD, IEEE IoT Journal, ACM ToSN, ACM TIST, ACM TCPS. Prof. Cao has also actively served Hong Kong local professional communities, including Entrepreneurship Advisor of HK A.I. Lab., member of HK Innovation and Technology Fund Research Projects Assessment Panel, member of Engineering Panel of Hong Kong Research Grant Council, member of Incu-Tech Business Incubation Programme Panel of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, and member of HKIE’s Accreditation Committee for Computer Science Programmes.

曹建農教授現任香港理工大學研究生院院長、潘樂陶慈善基金數據科學教授、電子計算學系分佈式與移動計算講座教授、人工智能與物聯網研究院主任、互聯網和移動計算實驗室主任、理大大數據分析中心實驗室創始人及副主任，並曾於2011-2017年擔任電子計算學系系主任。曹教授為歐洲人文和自然科學院院士，國際電機電子工程師學會(IEEE)會士，中國計算機學會(CCF)會士，計算機協會(ACM) 傑出會員。

曹建農教授的研究興趣涵蓋分佈式系統、區塊鏈、無線感知與網絡、大數據與機器學習、移動雲和邊緣計算。他負責編著了5本著作並參與編寫其他9部著作，在國際權威期刊和頂級國際會議上發表學術論文500餘篇，並獲得了16項專利。由於傑出的研究表現與成就，曹教授已獲得多個獎項，包括香港理工大學校長傑出科研獎、中國教育部高等學校科學研究優秀成果獎自然科學獎二等獎、中國計算機學會海外傑出貢獻獎、IEEE 雲計算學會研究創新獎、比利時布魯塞爾「世界創新科技博覽會」銅獎、香港資訊及通訊科技獎：最佳創新及研究、中創軟件人才獎、教育部提名國家科學技術一等獎、國家科學技術進步二等獎；以及多次最佳論文獎（Blocksys 2021, IEEE Trans. Industrial Informatics 2018, IEEE DSAA 2017, IEEE SMARTCOMP 2016, IEEE/IFIP EUC 2016, IEEE ISPA 2013, IEEE WCNC 2011等）。此外，他曾受邀做過超過50場主題報告和特邀演講。

曹建農教授主持和參與開發超過130個科研項目，並作為項目負責人承擔包括中國國家自然科學基金委員會、國家科學技術部、香港研究資助局、創新科技署創新及科技基金、香港學者協會、阿裡巴巴、IBM、諾基亞、香港賽馬會、香港建造業協會等資助機構的項目，項目總經費超過7,000萬港幣。

曹建農教授曾於2012-2014年擔任IEEE計算機學會分佈式計算技術委員會主席、IEEE電腦和可靠性學會會士評估委員會委員、IEEE計算機學會教育獎項評選委員會委員、IEEE通信學會獎項委員會委員、IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing指導委員會委員。同時，曹教授擔任多個國際學術會議的大會主席和技術委員會委員，包括IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE PERCOM, IEEE IoTDI, IEEE ICPADS, IEEE CLOUDCOM, SRDS and OPODIS等, 以及擔任眾多國際著名期刊的編輯編委工作，包括IEEE TC, IEEE TPDS, IEEE TBD, IEEE IoT Journal, ACM ToSN, ACM TIST, ACM TCPS。曹建農教授還積極服務於香港政府和工業界,包括香港人工智慧實驗室創業大講堂導師、創新科技署創新及科技基金研究項目評審委員會資訊科技組委員、香港科技園科技企業孵化計畫小組委員、香港工程師學會電腦科學計畫評審委員會委員。

• School-based Diversity Management (DM) 2.0, Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, 2021/09 - 2024/08
• Decentralized Model Learning with Unlabeled Streaming Data for Edge AI, HK RGC General Research Fund (GRF), 2022/01 - 2024/12
• Intelligent Manufacturing-oriented Big Data Analytics across the Production Process: Methodologies and Applications, Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macau Technology Research Programme (Type C), 2021/07 - 2023/07
• E-Tree Learning: A Novel Decentralized Model Learning Framework for Edge AI, HK RGC General Research Grant, 2021/01 - 2023/12
• A High-performance Distributed Machine Learning Framework for Graph-based Streaming Data with Smart City Applications, Theme-based Research Scheme, 2020/09 - 2025/08, Co-PI
• Thin Tasklets: Integration of a Distributed Computing Environment in the Internet of Things, Germany/Hong Kong Joint Research Scheme, 2020/01 - 2021/12
• Task Partition and Migration for High Performance Collaborative Edge Computing, HK RGC General Research Fund (GRF), 2020/01 - 2022/12
• Tackling Grand Challenges in Food Safety: A Big Data and IoT Enabled Approach, HK RGC Research Impact Fund (RIF), 2019/06-2024/06
• Multi-stage Big Data Analytics for Complex Systems: Methodologies and Applications, HK RGC Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) - Group Research Grant, 2019/06-2022/06

• Zhenyu Ning, Chenxu Wang, Yinhua Chen, Fengwei Zhang, Jiannong Cao, “Revisiting ARM Debugging Features: Nailgun and Its Defense”, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2022.
• Yanni Yang, Yanwen Wang, Jiannong Cao, Jinlin Chen, “HearLiquid: Non-intrusive Liquid Fraud Detection Using Commodity Acoustic Devices”, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2022.
• Divya Saxena, Tarun Kulshrestha, Jiannong Cao, Shing-Chi Cheung, “Multi-Constraint Adversarial Networks for Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation”, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP), 2022.
• Senzhang Wang, Jiaqiang Zhang, Jiyue Li, Hao Miao, Jiannong Cao, “Traffic Accident Risk Prediction via Multi-View Multi-Task Spatio-Temporal Networks”, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 2021.
• Bing Su, Xinyue Li, Shengwei Wang, Jiannong Cao, “Distributed Optimal Control for HVAC systems Adopting Edge Computing-Strategy, Implementation and Experimental Validation”, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2021.
• Yanling Bu, Lei Xie, Yafeng Yin, Chuyu Wang, Jingyi Ning, Jiannong Cao, Sanglu Lu, “Handwriting-Assistant: Reconstructing Continous Strokes with Millimeter-level Accuracy via Attachable Inertial Sensors”, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2021.
• Jinlin Chen, Jiannong Cao, Zhixuan Liang, Xiaohui Cui, Lequan Yu, Wei Li, “STPD: Defending against ℓ0-norm attacks with space transformation”, Future Generation Computer Systems, 126:225-236, 2022
• Yanni Yang, Jiannong Cao, Yanwen Wang, “Robust RFID-based respiration monitoring in dynamic environments”, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), 2021

• Outstanding Award: Faculty Award in Research and Scholarly Activities: Outstanding Researcher, 2021.
• Keynote speech at 7th IEEE Smart World Congress (SmartWorld 2021), 18-21 Oct 2021, Online.
• Keynote speech at 18th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS 2021), 4-7 Oct 2021, Online.
• Prof. Cao and his team won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Blockchain and Trustworthy Systems (Blocksys’2021).
• Prof. Cao and his team won 2 gold medals and 1 silver medal on 2021 China (Shanghai) International Exhibition of Inventions, 2021.