News

PolyU Two-day University Experience Programme 2020

Under the theme of “From Physics and ICT to Engineering”, the Faculty of Engineering organised a Two-day University Experience (TUE) Online Programme on 3 – 4 August for secondary students who are taking Science, ICT, or M1/M2 subjects. A series of thematic online lectures on seven disciplines of engineering were arranged in these two days. Among them, the lecture delivered by the Department of Computing (COMP) attracted more than 220 Secondary 3 to Secondary 5 attendees. Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP, started the session by bringing some basic concepts of computing to the participants with an online game. Dr Peter Ng, Teaching Fellow of COMP, was also invited to introduce “Computing and Game Technologies”, enabling students to grasp the idea of game development and computer vision including Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). To further illustrate the know-how, participants were taken to a virtual tour of our VR & Game Lab. Dr Ng also demonstrated a machine learning project “physical toys recognising” and created two online polling questions about maths in game programming and machine learning for the students to express their views. TUE Programme provides a valuable opportunity for secondary students to experience learning at the university and interact with academics during the summertime.

Prof. Jiannong Cao is elected as Member of Academia Europaea

We are proud to announce that Prof. Jiannong Cao, Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science and Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing, has been elected as a Member of Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe) under the Informatics Section. Founded in 1988, Academia Europaea is a European, non-governmental association acting as an Academy of Humanities, Letters and Sciences with about 4,000 members and amongst them, 72 are Nobel Laureates. The members are eminent scientists and scholars from all academic disciplines who collectively aim at promoting learning, education and research. Membership is by invitation only and the primary criterion is “sustained academic excellence in the candidate’s field”. In July 2020, the Academy announced that 361 international scholars have been invited to accept membership of the Academia Europaea, following a rigorous peer review process. Prof. Cao has joined COMP since 1997. His research interests include Parallel and Distributed Computing, Wireless Networking and Mobile Computing, Big Data and Machine Learning, and Cloud and Edge Computing. In addition to publishing over 700 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings, Prof. Cao has directed and participated in over 90 research and development projects and, as a principal investigator, obtained over HK$60 million grants from national and local funding agencies as well as key technology companies. For his exceptional research efforts, Prof. Cao has also been named Fellow of IEEE, Distinguished Member of ACM and Senior Member of CCF. The honour from Academia Europaea further reflects Prof. Cao’s outstanding accomplishments and contributions in the field of computer science for the advancement of public benefit.

COMP scholars won the Best Paper Award at IEEE INFOCOM 2020

We are proud to announce that Dr Jiaxing Shen, Research Assistant Professor, Dr Yanwen Wang, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Dr Yuanqing Zheng, Associate Professor, received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE INFOCOM 2020 with the paper titled “Push the Limit of Acoustic Gesture Recognition”. This research project aims at developing a contact-free gesture recognition technology by analysing ultrasound echoes reflected from the user’s hand with neural network models. The team proposes to automatically generate training data using data augmentation technique to improve detection accuracy and robustness. The experiment results show that their work can substantially outperform the state-of-the-art in practice. In the future, the team hopes the touch-free gesture recognition technology can be used in kiosks and service robots to reduce the risk of spreading bacteria or virus via touchscreens in public areas (e.g., food ordering kiosks in canteens, queue ticket machines in restaurants, and self-check-in kiosks in airports). IEEE INFOCOM is a top ranked conference on networking in the research community. It is a major conference venue for researchers to present and exchange significant and innovative contributions and ideas in the field of networking and closely related areas. It covers both theoretical and systems research.

COMP PhD student received the Best Presentation Award at ICDHC 2020

Supervised by Dr Fiona Liu, Associate Professor of COMP, Mr Xinbo Yu, our PhD student, has been awarded the Best Presentation Award at the 14thInternational Conference on Digital Health and Care (ICDHC 2020) with the paper titled “Vision Based Daily Routine Recognition for Healthcare with Transfer Learning” among 224 papers submitted. This paper presents a vision-based method of logging the Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) of elderly people so as to provide better assistive and personalisation technologies. Current ADL-related research is based on data collected with help from non-elderly subjects in laboratory environments. To obtain more realistic datasets for the application, ADLs data for the elderly are collected from real-world environment involving real elderly subjects. To recognise these ADLs, Mr Yu proposes the use of a transfer learning algorithm. The proposed algorithm has good potential to be applied to logging ADLs for healthcare purposes such as evidence-based diagnosis and treatment. ICDHC provides a premier interdisciplinary platform for leading academic scientists, researchers, practitioners and research scholars to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, concerns, practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted, as well as exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects of Digital Health and Care.

COMP research student team won the 1st National Artificial Intelligence Challenge

Congratulations to our research student team consisted of Mr Liang Jie, Mr Yang Xi and Mr Zeng Hui on winning a First Class Award at the 1stNational Artificial Intelligence Challenge (NAIC) Award Presentation Ceremony held on 15 January 2020 in Shenzhen, China. The team well demonstrated their professional knowledge and skills in transferring AI technologies to industry solutions, competing among over 3,000 teams from 13 countries and regions. NAIC included stages from the preliminary, semi-final to finals. The team took part in the “AI + 4K HDR” track under the theme of AI application in the 4K/ HD video processing field. They explored the performance of 4K high dynamic range (HDR) standard in terms of image resolution, details, colour and dynamic range, and designed practical solutions. “The competition contained multiple intertwined tasks, some of which had contradictive objectives. Processing these tasks consume a lot of computational resources and time was somehow limited given such a complicated competition. We analyzed the overall objective, then divided the difficult problems into several more controllable subtasks. The divide-and-conquer strategy is a common practice widely used in designing a sophisticated system in the IT industry. We got inspiration from our internship experience at the Artificial Intelligence Centre of Alibaba DAMO Academy,” said Mr Hui, the team leader. “We would like to thank our supervisor, Prof. Lei Zhang, for his valuable technical and professional guidance. Besides, we would also express our gratitude to Alibaba for their support of computational resources during the competition.” The team keeps improving the algorithms since winning the competition. They are collaborating with the DAMO Academy to convert their research to real-world applications, such as transforming the huge number of classical videos in standard dynamic range and limited resolution to high dynamic range video with 4K resolution, to meet the upcoming demands in the popularization of 4K displays. Hosted by the Shenzhen Municipal People's Government of China, NAIC aims to create an atmosphere of artificial intelligence creation and to promote the integrated development of innovative elements including industry, academia, capital, and talent.

Prof. Lei Zhang is listed among the Top Scientists Ranking for Computer Science & Electronics 2020

We are proud to announce that Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor of Computer Vision and Image Analysis, ranks among the Top 1000 Scientists Ranking for Computer Science & Electronics 2020 presented by Guide2Research. Prof. Zhang joined COMP in 2006 and his research interests include Computer Vision, Image and Video Processing, Pattern Recognition and Deep Learning. According to Google Scholar, his works have been cited more than 50,000 times and his h-index is 109. Prof. Zhang is recognised in the list of Highly Cited Researchers 2019 by Clarivate Analytics for his exceptional research impact in the field of Engineering and he has been named for the fifth consecutive year since 2015. The Top Scientists Ranking for Computer Science & Electronics is one of the leading portals for computer science research providing trusted data on scientific contributions since 2015. It is a definitive list of leading scientists from the field of computer science and electronics, based on a detailed examination of more than 6000 profiles on Google Scholar and DBLP.

PolyU Online JUPAS Consultation Day: Admissions Strategies 2020

COMP hosted an Info Seminar at the PolyU Online JUPAS Consultation Day on 30 May to provide updated programme information on BSc (Hons) Scheme in Computing to the JUPAS applicants. Dr Hong-va Leong, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP, gave a detailed presentation on the programme features, curriculum and entrance requirements. Under the Scheme, we offer three degree programmes: BSc (Hons) in Computing, BSc (Hons) in Enterprise Information Systems, and BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence. In response to a huge demand for financial technologists and AI talents with the government’s vision to transform Hong Kong into a smart city, we have introduced the first local bachelor degree that combines FinTech with AI since 2019. Dr Leong also summarised the diversified learning opportunities that we provide to our students, including international summer programmes, mentorship programme, full-time internship, study tour and outbound exchange. During the Q&A session, we had live interaction with the students and parents. For more details of the Scheme, please watch our online Info Seminar by clicking the hyperlinks below: https://polyu.hk/ggZau (Cantonese) https://polyu.hk/TsUWR (English)

PolyU joins hands with Peng Cheng Laboratory on big data and artificial intelligence research

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Peng Cheng Laboratory (PCL) reached a partnership intention and a strategic cooperation signing ceremony was held on 20 April 2020. The agreement was signed by Ir Prof. Alexander Wai, Deputy President and Provost of PolyU, and Prof. Wen Gao, Director of PCL, via a cloud-based video conferencing. Participating in this collaboration, the Department of Computing (COMP) will leverage its expertise to support PolyU and PCL advancing the growth of Big Data Analytics, Advanced Networks, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics, Blockchains, and Smart Health through the sharing of laboratory equipment and scientific research resources, thus to foster the development of groundbreaking technologies, as well as academic exchanges and talent cultivation. The strategic cooperation will further exploit PolyU and PCL’s research predominance and excellence. It will bring new opportunities to both parties, strengthen the connection with industrial partners and contribute to the Greater Bay Area with practical and impactful innovations. PCL, established as a Provincial Research Laboratory by the Guangdong Provincial Government, amasses high-quality innovative resources, builds relevant major scientific infrastructure, and carries out interdisciplinary and collaborative research in the field of network information, AI and cyberspace security.

Online Career Talk - “Workforce Demands in Digital Age”

To provide COMP students with more insights on the career development in computing and IT, we co-organised an online career talk on “Workforce Demands in Digital Age” with Institute of Financial Technologist of Asia (IFTA) on 29 April 2020. We invited various executives and practitioners from the banking and finance industry, as well as IT experts, to analyse the manpower demand in this digital era and share advice to our students on shaping their career path. Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP, and Mr Paul Pong, Chairman of IFTA, gave a brief introduction and welcomed all participants. A wide range of topics was covered during the career talk, including career opportunities in virtual banks, cybersecurity landscape and workforce demands, how to step on the ladder towards IT professionals, and recent career development in the FinTech industry. There were lively discussions and good engagement between the speakers and the attendees. The career talk enabled our students to grasp the recent trend in IT and understand the technical skill sets and professional certifications required. COMP students could click here to log in and watch the recorded video.

Prof. Jiannong Cao is appointed as Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Endowed Professorship in Data Science

We are proud to announce that Prof. Jiannong Cao has been appointed as Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science under PolyU Endowed Professorship Scheme, being the first-ever Endowed Professor in the Department. The Endowed Professorship further cements Prof. Cao’s status as an outstanding scholar and well-established authority in this area of research. Prof. Cao has joined COMP since 1997. He is currently the Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing and the Director of University Research Facility in Big Data Analytics (UBDA). His research interests include parallel and distributed computing, wireless sensing and networks, pervasive and mobile computing, and big data and cloud computing. Prof. Cao has published over 600 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings. He has directed and participated in over 90 research and development projects and, as a principal investigator, obtained over HK$60 million grants from national and local funding agencies as well as key technology companies. He is also a Fellow of IEEE and a Distinguished Member of ACM. The Endowed Professorship Scheme provides donors with the unique opportunity to partner with the University to advance research and academic activities of a discipline of their choice for the betterment of the society. Endowed Professors can take advantage of extra resources to continue their excellent work in research and teaching.