Professor Chin has retired from HKU in 2015 and is now an Emeritus Professor of The University of Hong Kong. He is now working as Founder and Chief Solution Officer of a startup company,   DeepTranslate Limited , on Machine Translation of financial documents at Hong Kong Science Park.

Professor Chin received his B.A.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto in 1972, and his M.S., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University in 1974, 1975, and 1976, respectively. Prior to joining The University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 1985, he had taught at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the University of California, San Diego; the University of Alberta; the Chinese University of Hong Kong; and the University of Texas at Dallas.

He was also the Chair of the Department of Computer Science at HKU and was the founding Head of the Department from its establishment until December 31, 1999. From 2002 until July 31, 2006, he had served as the Associate Dean of the Graduate School. Since 2007, Prof Chin has been serving as an Associate Dean of the Faculty of Engineering.