News

COMP x CAA Academic-Industry Seminar Series – FinTech (Nov 2022)

On 23rd Nov 2022, the final seminar featuring “FinTech” (i.e. Financial Technology) in the Academic-Industry Seminar series ended on a high note. Dr Henry CHAN, our Associate Professor and Associate Head of Partnership and Collaboration, joined hands with Mr Darron SUN, the Vice Chairman of The Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia, to discuss the trend and development of FinTech, especially in the post-pandemic era, and beacon participants what kinds of skills and knowledge were necessary for FinTech professionals. Mr SUN first brought up the changes in the FinTech landscape under the new normal and new economy, followed by the outlook for the local market. He predicted that Big Data and AI, and Regtech, would burgeon in the short future. He believed that the “FinTech 2025” strategy is conducive to the talent market and urged participants to obtain a professional FinTech credential. In Dr CHAN’s talk, he introduced an ITF-funded PRP project entitled: “An Innovative Hybrid Intelligence Web System for the Hong Kong Stock Market”, an analytic system powered by the combination of human intelligence and machine intelligence. Various resources such as open-source natural language processing libraries, useful models and research methods were introduced by Dr CHAN, demonstrating how to analyse the Hong Kong stock market from different perspectives. Attended by more than 140 participants in this final seminar, the first series of the Academic-Industry Seminar series was concluded with great success. The seminar series aims to enhance the connection between COMP and alumni, encourage life-long learning, as well as foster possible collaboration between COMP and industry.

Prof. CAO Jiannong has been selected for the President’s Awards for Outstanding Achievement 2021/22

PolyU recognises the distinguished accomplishments and contributions of staff members through the President’s Awards for Outstanding Achievement. We are delighted to congratulate Prof. CAO Jiannong (Dean of Graduate School, Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science and Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing of COMP), for receiving this prestigious award in the category of Research and Scholarly Activities (Outstanding Researcher), in academic year 2021/22. This year, only six individual staff members and two teams school-wide, who have demonstrated unparalleled achievements, are crowned with this glory and honour. The award presentation ceremony will be held early next year. Prof. CAO is the director, co-director and/ or the founder of several research institutes, including Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence of Things (RIAIoT), Internet and Mobile Computing Lab (IMCL), University's Research Facility in Big Data Analytics (UBDA). He served as the department head from 2011 to 2017. Prof. CAO is currently member of Academia Europaea, a fellow of IEEE, a fellow of China Computer Federation (CCF), and an ACM distinguished member. His 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. Back in 2009, The President’s Award for Excellent Performance/Achievement in Research and Scholarly Activities 2008/09 was conferred on him as well.

COMP academics named Highly Cited Researchers 2022

Two academic members of our Department are named Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) in 2022, as announced by Clarivate. Since 2015, Prof. ZHANG Lei, Chair Professor of Computer Vision and Image Analysis, has been named HCR in the field of Engineering seven times. This demonstrates a lasting and significant influence on engineering. According to Clarivate, Prof. ZHANG’s research works have been cited more than 27,000 times in Web of Science and his H-index is 79. His research interests include image and video processing, computer vision, pattern recognition and biometrics, etc. Prof. GUO Song, our Professor, is one of the only three scholars in Hong Kong who are recognised as HCR in the field of Computer Science this year. He has contributed more than 540 publications in Web of Science and has generated remarkable impact in the field. His research interests are mainly in edge AI, big data and machine learning, mobile computing, and distributed systems. The 2022 list of HCR is released by Clarivate Plc, a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation. The list focuses on contemporary research achievement: only highly cited papers in the sciences and social sciences journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection™ during the 11-year period 2011 to 2021 were surveyed. Highly cited papers are defined as those that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year.

Prof. GUO Song elected Member of Academia Europaea

Prof. GUO Song, Professor of our Department, has been elected as the Member of Academia Europaea under the Informatics Section in 2022. Prof. GUO’s research interests are mainly in edge AI, 6G, big data and machine learning, mobile computing, and distributed systems. His research has been sponsored by RGC, NSFC, ITF, MOST, NRC, JSPS, MIC, JST, industry, etc. He published many papers in top venues with wide impact in these areas and was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate Web of Science). He is the recipient of the 2020 Best Paper Award for IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2019 IEEE TCBD Best Conference Paper Award, 2018 IEEE TCGCC Best Magazine Paper Award, 2019 & 2017 IEEE Systems Journal Annual Best Paper Award, and other 8 Best Paper Awards from IEEE/ACM conferences. He also received the Faculty Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research and Scholarly Activities twice. The Academia Europaea was established in 1988 and is the Pan-European Academy of Sciences Humanities and Letters. Their members are scientists and scholars who collectively aim to promote learning, education and research. Their membership invitations are made only after peer group nomination, scrutiny and confirmation as to the scholarship and eminence of the individual in their chosen field. Election is confirmed by the Council of the Academia. Congratulations to Prof. GUO.

Research Work by Dr Zheng Yuanqing and collaborators received the Test of Time Award in SenSys 2022

We are pleased to announce that the research work “IODetector: A Generic Service for Indoor Outdoor Detection” by our Associate Professor Dr ZHENG Yuanqing  and his collaborators (ZHOU Pengfei , LI Zhenjiang , LI Mo, and SHEN Guobin) published in ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys) 2012 received the Test of Time Award in SenSys 2022 for “Contributions to intelligent mobile location services with enduring commercial adoption and successful widespread technology transfer”. ACM SenSys is the premier computer systems conference focused on the architecture, design, implementation, and performance of networked sensing systems, sensor-oriented data modelling and analytics, and sensor-enabled applications. The Test of Time Award recognizes research papers that are at least 10 years old and have had long-lasting academic, industrial and/or societal impact on networked embedded sensing system science and engineering. IODetector is the first smartphone based solution for indoor/outdoor detection, and also one of the pioneering research works in mobile sensing. IODetector has been successfully integrated in the business of on-demand food delivery service in over 300 cities in China, providing accurate status estimation for over 1 million food couriers which helps improve the delivery efficiency and increase the business profit. We believe the indoor/outdoor status could be an essential component of the infrastructure information to facilitate mobile applications and systems. Deployment experience and lessons learned are described in a recent experience paper “Experience: Adopting Indoor Outdoor Detection in On-demand Food Delivery Service” in MobiCom 2022.

COMP Capstone Project awarded First Runner-up in Final Year Project Competition 2022 held by IEEE Computational Intelligence Society

To identify outstanding final year projects in the field of computational intelligence, Hong Kong Chapter of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society organised the 19th Final Year Project Competition in August 2022. Sweta Das, our recent graduate of BSc (Hons) in Computing, received the first runner-up award in the competition with her capstone project titled “Affective Awareness Agents in Virtual Reality”. The project aims to create an affective awareness agent, which can understand the user’s emotions from multiple input channels and make responses in support of VR. Analysis of speech or facial expressions alone usually depicts human emotions inaccurately. The awarded project addresses these limits and examines the emotions of users with both speech and facial recognition. The speech of the user is captured in the microphone, while the facial expressions of the lower mouth are captured through the facial tracker attached to the headset. In return for the inputs, an agent replies by lip synchronising the response to the user according to the emotion analysed. The project was inspired by a few successful research projects published in academia and industry. Dr LI Chen Richard, COMP Research Assistant Professor, is the supervisor of the project. “I am thankful to Dr Richard Li for his invaluable guidance and support throughout”, said Sweta.

First full-scale Undergraduate Info Day since the pandemic outbreak was completed with great success

The hybrid PolyU Undergraduate Info Day 2022 ended on 8 October, attracting more than 26,000 visitors to participate in this annual highlight at the PolyU campus and online platform. This year, COMP arranged interactive booth activities and consultation sessions, information seminars and laboratory tours with live demonstrations. The event was the first full-scale physical Info Day after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to travel restrictions, both the booth consultation and information seminar supported an online option. International students could enjoy equal opportunities to learn about our undergraduate programmes and get advice from our academic staff. At the physical booth, visitors had chance to meet and talk with our staff and students in person and taste Metaverse in the virtual treasure hunt activities. The information seminars covered the features of our BSc Scheme in Computing and AI, general admission requirements and the career path after graduation, which attracted more than 400 students and parents to attend. To enable visitors a peek inside the research and teaching facilities of COMP, guided laboratory tours at our Game Lab were arranged. More than 260 visitors joined the tours and experienced the Mixed Reality applications designed by our students. PolyU Undergraduate Info Day is an annual event which provides an excellent platform for prospective students, their parents and the public to obtain the most up-to-date information on a wide range of academic programmes and to gain valuable tips about planning for university life.

2022 One-week Online Engineering Summer Programme with Cambridge University (Girton College)

The One-week Online Engineering Summer Programme with Cambridge University (Girton College) was successfully held from 25 to 29 July 2022. The programme was co-organised by Girton College of the University of Cambridge and the Faculty of Engineering of PolyU. Fifteen COMP students joined the programme this year. The course “Maths for Engineering” was delivered by Dr John Longley, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Engineering from the University of Cambridge. Different areas in mathematics were covered in the course, including vector analysis, matrix algebra, numerical solutions and quadrature, introduction to engineering statistics, as well as data analysis for engineers, which could help to improve students’ calculation skills. The programme was also a window on study life at Girton College and the University of Cambridge. Students had the opportunity to glimpse the Cambridge experience and to connect with students on the other side of the world during discussion night and a walking tour. The cultural exchange inspired our students to further explore the United Kingdom in the future.

2022 UG Summer Research Experience at MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node

The summer research programme at the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node was successfully held from 5 June to 15 July 2022. This year, with the sponsor from PolyU’s UG Summer Research Abroad Sponsorship Scheme, nine COMP students participated in the programme. The programme not only provided a valuable learning experience to our students but also granted them precious opportunity to look into the industry and be prepared for their further careers. Students formed teams to research real-world challenges related to App Inventor, IoT, and Blockchain, with the guidance and supervision of their mentors from the industry during the six-week programme. By the end of the programme, teams got constructive feedback from mentors in return for the showcase of their findings. Students also had a chance to visit SICK Optic-Electronic Co. Ltd., a leading company in sensor intelligence and application solutions, gaining insight in a practical perspective. ZHANG Wengyu and PAN Zewen (BSc (Hons) in Computing, Year 2 and 4 respectively) teamed up with one ISE Student to work on “lighTag: a UWB Positioning System Integrated in Lighting System and its Applications”. It is an application to locate people’s positions and control lights in an area. “Through this MIT Summer Programme, we were able to learn and explore fresh technologies and be supported and inspired by the most outstanding experts who are transferring knowledge into real life and industries.” Wengyu said. On the other hand, PAN Yalu (BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology & Artificial Intelligence, Year 3) and her teammates: LI Muyuan (BSc (Hons) in Computing, Year 3), LIU Mingci and WANG Zhuchen (BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology & Artificial Intelligence, Year 3 and 4 respectively), focused on blockchain-related research. They used Solidity to design and write a smart contract that store and get notarized information from Ethereum. Yalu shared that she was able to develop critical thinking and coding skills in the process.

Two winning projects in GBA Blockchain Olympiad 2022

The  Greater Bay Area Blockchain Olympiad (GBA IBCOL) was held virtually from 5 to 7 August 2022. The GBA IBCOL is a regional blockchain competition amongst students in  Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR, with sponsorship from the Innovation and Technology Commission. Claire YU Tzu-Yin teamed up with Harriet LO Yan-Suet (Both from BSc (Hons) Financial Technology & Artificial Intelligence, Year 3) to develop a project called “Blockarian – B-Safe”, which won triple awards at the competition, including the Award of Merit, Tertiary Track Award and Fintech Runner-Up. “Blockarian – B-Safe” is an artificial intelligence app targeted at construction issues, promoting bio-friendly buildings as well as ensuring the safety of the architecture. It can provide professional advice according to the construction guidelines of different cities in the Greater Bay Area. Claire shared that the competition offered a wonderful chance to extend perspectives and absorb new information. “Before the tournament and throughout the event, there were numerous opportunities for conversations and sharing. I gained a lot of knowledge from other teams, not just from their project ideas but also from the way they arranged and displayed the study data and created an attractive prototype,” she said. Another team member, Harriet, also said: “This programme has given me great motivation to become an entrepreneur, a role I would have never considered otherwise…Sharings from professionals in FinTech field have inspired me a lot, also enlightened me on unlimited opportunities in this field.” On the other hand, three COMP students, Daisy LIU Mingci, Mars MA Siqi, and Sunny WANG Zhuchen  (All from BSc (Hons) Financial Technology & Artificial Intelligence, Year 4, 4, 3), together with teammates from other universities, were awarded the Award of Merit with their project “Innotar”, a blockchain-based platform for file notarization (proof of existence, ownership of a document and transfer of ownership), e-signing and verification. The Award of Merit is the most important award in the blockchain olympiad and is designated for projects which have satisfied the minimum of a complete blockchain solution design. Top Tertiary Track Award is awarded to the project scoring over 80% from a tertiary-level academic institution. Fintech Runner-Up is given to the recognised teams in the Fintech or Financial Technology category.