News

Hong Kong Techathon 2018

Co-organised by Institute for Entrepreneurship of PolyU, City University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP), Hong Kong Techathon 2018 was held at InnoCentre on 5 – 7 January. PolyU student team consisted of 2 COMP students and 1 EIE student won the Hong Kong Techathon with their project, Sense+. Being one of the 13 winning teams, they were awarded with a direct entry to PolyU Micro Fund Scheme 2018 Final Assessment for a Seed Fund up to HK$120,000 and a conditional offer to HKSTP Incubation Programme. Two pre-Techathon workshops were held on 25 November and 2 December last year, enabling participants to meet entrepreneurs, team up with like-minded people and understand the latest technologies. During the 2-day competition, each team built prototypes and demonstrated their projects on one of the four themes including Education/ Social Technology, Fintech, Healthcare Technology and Internet of Things. “Sense+” stands for “See, Explore, Notice and Search with Ears”. It is a Computer Vision application with comprehensive online information for the visually impaired. Equipped with machine-learning based computer vision technology, it could describe scenes, recognise faces, identify banknotes and read out text or books. Hong Kong Techathon provides a great platform for programmers, engineers, designers, marketers and entrepreneurs to work collaboratively over a weekend and come up with ideas, prototypes.

Fintech & Blockchain Seminar

Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia (IFTA) organised a seminar on FinTech & Blockchain at PolyU on 2 March by inviting industry leaders to share their insights and experience. With the support from COMP and Institute for Entrepreneurship (IfE) of PolyU, the seminar attracted over a hundred of participants. At the opening ceremony, Dr Miranda Lou, Executive Vice President of PolyU, Mr Paul Pong, Founder of IFTA and Dr David Chung, JP, Under Secretary of Innovation and Technology Bureau, delivered the welcoming speech respectively. Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP introduced COMP’s Development on FinTech and Blockchain, along with other distinguished speakers from the industry including Mr Sanjay Bhandari, Co-Founder of Certificate of Finance and Technology of UK, Mr Lawrence Ma, President of Hong Kong Blockchain Society and Mr Fred Sheu, National Technology Officer of Microsoft Hong Kong. IFTA aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of financial technology (FinTech) education and qualifications in Asia. The seminar successfully brought different parties together to exchange knowledge and views, thus enhancing the promotion of Fintech and Blockchain technology and fostering collaboration.

PTeC's Outstanding Professional Services Awards 2017

Organised by PolyU Technology and Consultancy Company Limited (PTeC), the presentation ceremony of Outstanding Professional Services Awards was held on 2 March at Hotel ICON. We are delighted to share with you the good news that COMP received a Merit Award of Highest Growth in recognition of COMP as the second highest ranking department in terms of i) absolute growth in total invoiced value and ii) percentage of growth compare to the previous financial year. A number of COMP staff members also received various Outstanding Professional Services Awards in honour of their efforts devoted to consultancy activities. PTeC is the strategic professional service arm of PolyU that provides one-stop consultancy and technology transfer services to business sectors, government institutions and non-profit making organisations. The Outstanding Professional Services Awards are administered by PTeC to honour departments and staff members in consultancy and licensing activities.   Category Award Awardees Departmental Award Highest Growth (Merit) COMP Individual Award Highest Growth Consultant (Winner) Prof. Qin LU Team Award Most Valued Project (Winner) -“Provision of Electronic Data Submission Consultancy Services" Dr Vincent NG (Project Leader) Prof. Jiannong CAO Dr Dorothy CHAU Team Award Highest International/ Non-local Consultancy (Winner) -“AI3 – A Layered-Federation Information Sharing Architecture" Prof. Jiannong CAO & his research team                

Outstanding Student Award 2017

The Outstanding Students Award Scheme is one of the most prestigious award schemes in PolyU which is set up to recognise high achievers. We are glad to announce that our final year student of BSc (Hons) in Computing, Mr Xiating Ouyang, was awarded with the “Outstanding Student Award of Department” for his excellent academic performance, good personal qualities and active involvement in extra-curricular activities. With exceptional outstanding academic achievement, Mr Ouyang has been on the Dean’s Honours List in 2014/15 and ranked first in his cohort for the past 3 years. He also received numerous competitive scholarships throughout his study at PolyU. As the Internal Vice President (2016) of Exploring Hong Kong Community, Mr Ouyang demonstrated strong leadership skills and capability in organizing activities for exchange students. His proactive participation in competitions, international exchange programmes to MIT in USA and University of Waterloo in Canada, and research work further equipped him to be an all-rounder. On 26 February, Prof. Timothy Tong, President of PolyU officiated the Outstanding Student Awards Presentation Ceremony and presented the Certificate of Award to the top undergraduate students who excel in both academic and non-academic pursuits. Congratulations to Mr Ouyang on receiving this honour.

Global Game Jam 2018

We are glad to announce that the PolyU team consisted of students from Department of Computing (COMP) and School of Design (SD) was awarded the “Future Game Developer” with their VR game “Love in the Game Jam” in the Global Game Jam Hong Kong site (GGJ HK) 2018. The Global Game Jam (GGJ) was held on 26 – 28 January. This year, over 42 thousand jammers from 804 jam sites located in 109 countries participated. The GGJ allows jammers to get together in their respective regions, form teams and develop games in the time span of 48 hours under a global theme announced on-site. The GGJ HK was organised by Cyberport and SD of PolyU, attracting 339 jammers to create 59 games at Cyberport. It was the sixth biggest among all locations worldwide. “Love in the Game Jam” is a VR game for which players have to match couples with Cupid’s arrows within limited time. Our students demonstrated strong team spirit and programming skills during the game development cycle from ideation, testing to implementation. The organiser presented award to the best team in each of the nine categories.   Team Members Department Programme Lee Kiu Lun, Isaac COMP BSc (Hons) Information Technology Chan Sing Kam COMP BSc (Hons) Information Technology Li Tsz Fung COMP BSc (Hons) Information Technology Leung Shek Hin COMP BSc (Hons) Information Technology Lee Kwok Shing, Victor SD MSc in Multimedia and Entertainment Technology Tian Yuan, Finnik SD MSc in Multimedia and Entertainment Technology Wong Nicholas Nick Heng SD MSc in Multimedia and Entertainment Technology

Faculty External Grants Achievement Awards 2016

We are pleased to announce that Dr Yixin Cao, Assistant Professor of COMP, received the Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Research Grant Achievement Award 2016. Since 2003, the Faculty Research Committee has set up FENG Research Grant Achievement Award and FENG Industrial and Engineering Services Grant Achievement Award in recognition of the outstanding performance of FENG academic staff members in securing external research grants. To be qualified, a staff member must successfully secure 3 external competitive research grants in 36 months or 4 external competitive research grants in 60 months, as Principal Investigator/ co-Principal Investigator. Dr Cao has secured 4 external research grants in 36 months since he joined PolyU in 2014. Congratulations to Dr Cao for his achievement!   Year Funding Scheme Project Title Funding Awarded 1 2017/18 RGC General Research Fund Super-Polynomial Approximation of Graph Problems HKD700,000 2 2016/17 RGC General Research Fund Graph Algorithms Based on Modular Decomposition HKD675,647 3 2015/16 RGC Early Career Scheme Efficient Algorithms for Graph Modification Problems HKD726,075 4 2015/16 NSFC 圈結構及其演算法研究 RMB787,000

Unity Training/Certification Programme

To provide diversified learning opportunities to students from time to time, COMP collaborates with various well-known corporations in the IT industry in order to strengthen students' practical skills and enhance their employability in this modern digital era. On 19 January, Mr Marek Marchlewicz, Unity Evangelist from Unity Shanghai, came to PolyU to deliver a special training session introducing the latest Unity technologies about Cinemachine and fluid simulation. Recently, COMP launched a five-month Unity Training/Certification Programme with the aim of assisting students to prepare for the Unity Certified Developer examination in June. It is currently the only professional certification in the games industry. To get certified, candidates have to pass a rigorous test of technical and problem solving skills designed by specialists and experts from the games, 3D and interactive industries. The training programme includes workshops as well as intensive revisions and exercises by different trainers and game developers. It will help to enhance students’ programming skills in general. Previous candidates are also invited to share their experience. Having such certification allows students to demonstrate their applied knowledge, foundational game design and technical programming skills that meet the industry standards and facilitates their career development in the games industry. In addition to the technical training, we also invited a COMP alumnus to share his story of running a game start-up and representative from Tencent to talk about the prospect of the games industry. We hope that the students will understand what options are available and how to plan for their career after attaining the certification. Unity Technologies offers a platform for creating attractive and engaging 2D, 3D, VR, and AR games and apps. The Unity game engine is one of the most popular game development engines used in the market.

Seminar on "How does Microsoft respond to cyber attack?"

COMP organised a seminar on "How does Microsoft respond to cyber attack?” at PolyU on 3 February. Mr Barry Kong, Analyst, Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) of Microsoft Hong Kong was invited to share the insights on cyber security, new trends in cyber attack and how DCU partners with law enforcement globally to investigate and take action against ransomware infection. DCU is a special unit within Microsoft comprising of an international team of attorneys, analysts, investigators, data scientists, engineers and business professionals based in 30 countries, who work together and collaborate with law enforcements and stakeholders, to transform the ongoing fight against digital crime and global malware, reduce digital risk, and protect the general public. Mr Kong is also the Gold Award Winner of the Cyber Security Professionals Awards (CSPA) in 2017 and has deep knowledge and experience in cyber forensics and malware analysis, incident response, and other cyber security related technical topics.

Joint COMP/ICMA Affiliate Membership Scheme

COMP and the Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA) collaborate to establish the “Joint COMP/ICMA Affiliate Membership Scheme”, offering our students with free courses in strategic business analysis and strategic cost management, mentorship programme, internship referrals, networking opportunities, and free affiliate membership. Prof. Allen Wong, the Senior Vice President - Global and Founding President of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants - Hong Kong Office was invited to introduce the requirements, competitive advantages of CMA programme, as well as the roadmap to become a certified management accountant, and members’ benefits to COMP students on 1 February. ICMA was officially incorporated in 1996 in Australia which aims to provide local prospective and practicing management accountants with the opportunity to attain the highly-regarded CMA professional qualification, whilst providing members with a wide range of professional development workshops and seminars on management accounting and current business topics. At present, there are 17 regional/ branch offices serving over 10,000 professional members over the world.

Long Service Award 2017

PolyU Long Service Award scheme has been introduced since 1990 to foster a sense of belonging among PolyU staff members. This year, two COMP staff members were awarded in appreciation of their loyal service to the University over the years. On 31 January, Prof. Jiannong Cao, Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing and Director of University Research Facility in Big Data Analytics, and Dr Grace Ngai, Associate Professor of COMP and Associate Head of Office of Service-Learning, received the awards from Prof. Timothy Tong, President of PolyU, at the presentation ceremony. The ceremony provided a warm gathering for the long-serving staff and an opportunity for the University to publicly acknowledge their years of dedicated service.