Students and staff at PolyU’s Department of Computing (COMP) received several honours at the Hong Kong RFID Awards 2010 Competition organized by GS1 Hong Kong. The awards aim to recognize achievements in the development and adoption of EPC/RFID technology. The winners were industry professionals from some of the best known businesses in the HKSAR, as well as talented students from local tertiary institutions.

In the U-21 Awards category for students, Mr Ng Hung-lam, a postgraduate student under the supervision of Dr Henry Chan, received the Silver Award (Best EPC/RFID Concept) for the project “Agent-enabled Flexible RFID Encoder and Decoder (A-FRED) System”. A-FRED is an extension of FRED by combining RFID and software agent technologies. FRED, developed by computing graduate Mr Chiu Chi-hang together with some researchers at the department, snatched a Silver Medal in the 38th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva in April 2010. FRED and A-FRED are related to the Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) project “Enhancing the Competitiveness of the Hong Kong Air Freight Forwarding Industry Using RFID and Software Agent Technologies”. The following computing students also received a Certificate of Merit for their projects: Choi Hin-kwong, Li Kai-hang, Ng Ka-wo, Wong Cho-tak, Wong Ka-lok and Yu Ka-wai.

In the Hong Kong RFID Awards category for businesses/organizations, Dr Henry Chan’s R&D team, in collaboration with DHL Global Forwarding (Hong Kong), received a Certificate of Merit for the case study on an RFID-based air cargo processing system which is related to the ITF project mentioned above.

Furthermore, COMP has beaten teams of computing talents from more than 200 universities in the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and triumphed at the Amway Pan-Pearl River Delta Region Universities IT Project Competition for two consecutive years. In 2010, computing graduates Mr Lo Wai-kwan and Mr Tang Wai-wa (supervised by Dr Grace Ngai and Dr Stephen Chan) won a Gold Award at the final round in Chengdu and a Top Prize in HKSAR region for their final year project. Their project, "i*Chameleon", is a supporting framework that facilitates the development and integration of new input modalities into computer systems, and makes it easy to add and combine different input methods such as gestures, voice and haptics, for new or existing applications. Last year the Gold Award went to COMP’s first-class honour graduate Mr Lau Hiu-fung, who was recently named among the "Ten Outstanding Young Persons 2010”. In addition, the project “i*Chameleon” secured another Merit Award in the MSC Malaysia Asia Pacific ICT Awards 2010.

These achievements rightly demonstrate COMP’s approach to quality education reflected in the departmental motto "COMP@PolyU: We CARE"."CARE" is underpinned by Career, Application, Research, and Entrepreneurship. Prof. Jiannong Cao, Acting Head of COMP, said: “To learn and to apply, we encourage and guide our students/graduates to participate in competitions. We are committed to nurturing all-round students through our education philosophy and we are really proud of these achievements.”