News

PolyU InnoTech Open Day 2022

PolyU InnoTech Open Day was smoothly held at the campus on 16 July 2022. Being one of the signature events of PolyU’s 85th Anniversary celebrations, the InnoTech Open Day has showcased the university’s endeavours in interdisciplinary research, innovation, knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship. In the afternoon session, face-to-face student consultations, info seminars about PolyU’s academic programmes etc., were arranged for visitors, especially JUPAS applicants and their parents. Our staff members joined the booth of the Faculty of Engineering to provide study advice and comprehensive information on the programmes offered by COMP. Hundreds of visitors had lively interactions and fruitful exchanges with our academic staff. On the other hand, to further promote the new programme hosted by COMP, namely “Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics (AIDA)”, Dr LEONG Hong-va, our Associate Professor and Associate Head (Teaching & Learning), was invited to deliver two informative talks with full house participation. Starting from the 2022/23 academic year, PolyU will introduce two new programme elements, providing students with more flexible study options and helping them to enhance their competitiveness. AIDA is one of the new programmes that will be incorporated into the General University Requirements, and students can also study AIDA as a Secondary Major or a Minor.

Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement 2022

Congratulations to the following staff members on receiving the Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement 2022. This truly reflects the great efforts and contributions made by them.    Category of Award  Award  Awardee Faculty Award in Teaching Outstanding Award (Team) Dr LEONG Hong Va (Team Leader), Associate Head and Associate Professor Dr Dennis LIU, Teaching Fellow Dr Richard LUI, Teaching Fellow Dr Peter NG, Teaching Fellow   Research and Scholarly Activities: Outstanding Researcher Merit Award (Individual) Prof. GUO Song, Professor Research and Scholarly Activities: Outstanding Young Researcher Merit Award (Individual) Dr WU Xiaoming, Associate Professor Faculty Award in Service Merit Award (Individual) Dr Henry CHAN, Associate Head and Associate Professor   The winners of the Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement are chosen by a Faculty Assessment Panel, comprising the Heads (or their delegates) and chaired by the Dean of Faculty of Engineering (FENG), from amongst a pool of well-qualified nominees put forward by individual departments under FENG. The selection is made with reference to the indicative criteria for assessment as laid down by the University for the exercise.  

Dr Daniel LUO received the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at ISSTA 2022

Our Associate Professor Dr Daniel LUO and his PhD students Mr ZHOU Hao and Mr WU Shuohan received the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award with the paper titled “NCScope: Hardware-Assisted Analyzer for Native Code in Android Apps” at the 31st edition of ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA). Other collaborators of this paper come from Pennsylvania State University, Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University, and Washington State University.   The paper proposes and develops a novel hardware-assisted analyzer for native code in apps. The research team leverages ETM, a hardware feature of ARM platform, and eBPF, a kernel component of Android system, to collect real execution traces and relevant memory data of target apps, and design new methods to scrutinise native code according to the collected data. To show the unique capability of NCScope, the team applies it to four applications that cannot be accomplished by existing tools, including systematic studies on self-protection and anti-analysis mechanisms implemented in native code of apps, analysis of memory corruption in native code, and identification of performance differences between functions in native code. The results uncover that only 26.8% of the analysed financial apps implement self-protection methods in native code, implying that the security of financial apps is far from expected. Meanwhile, 78.3% of the malicious apps under analysis have anti-analysis behaviours, suggesting that NCScope is very useful to malware analysis. Moreover, NCScope can effectively detect bugs in native code and identify performance differences.   ISSTA is the leading research symposium on software testing and analysis, bringing together academics, industrial researchers, and practitioners to exchange new ideas, problems, and experience on how to analyse and test software systems.

Dr SHI Jieming received 2022 ACM SIGMOD Research Highlight Award

We are pleased to announce that our Assistant Professor Dr SHI Jieming and his collaborators from Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore and Hamad Bin Khalifa University received the 2022 ACM SIGMOD (Special Interest Group on Management of Data) Research Highlight Award, for the paper titled “No PANE, No Gain: Scaling Attributed Network Embedding in a Single Server”. The work was also awarded Best Research Paper Award in VLDB (Very Large Data Bases Conference) in 2021.   This paper addresses the lack of scalability of existing attributed network embedding (ANE) techniques by proposing PANE, an effective and scalable approach for massive graphs in a single server that achieves state-of-the-art result quality on multiple benchmark datasets for two common prediction tasks: link prediction and node classification. Under the hood, PANE takes inspiration from well-established data management techniques to scale up ANE in a single server. Specifically, it exploits a carefully formulated problem based on a novel random walk model, a highly efficient solver, and non-trivial parallelization by utilizing modern multi-core CPUs. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PANE consistently outperforms all existing methods in terms of result quality, while being orders of magnitude faster.    The SIGMOD Research Highlight Award aims to make the selected works widely known in the database community, industry partners as well as the broader ACM community. It is a highly selective and prestigious award that showcases a set of research projects that exemplify core database research.   ACM SIGMOD is concerned with the principles, techniques and applications of database management systems and data management technology. Its members include software developers, academic and industrial researchers, practitioners, users, and students. SIGMOD sponsors the annual SIGMOD/PODS conference, which is one of the most important and selective in the field.

Prof. CHEN Changwen as IEEE T-BIOM Associate Editor-in-Chief

We are delighted and proud to announce that Prof. CHEN Changwen, Chair Professor of Visual Computing, has recently been appointed as Associate Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science (T-BIOM). Prof. Chen is the only editor from Hong Kong in T-BIOM.   Prof. Chen joined COMP in 2021 as Chair Professor of Visual Computing. His research expands a broad range of topics in multimedia communication, Internet of Video Things,  multimedia systems, image/video processing, machine learning, and multimedia signal processing. Prof. Chen has been the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Multimedia from January 2014 to December 2016. He has also served as the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology from January 2006 to December 2009. He has been an Editor for several other major IEEE Transactions and Journals, including the Proceedings of IEEE, IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications, and IEEE Journal of Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems. He has served as Conference Chair for several major IEEE, ACM and SPIE conferences related to multimedia video communications and signal processing.   T-BIOM publishes original articles on all aspects of biometrics (i.e. recognising people through their physiological or behavioural traits such as face, fingerprint, iris, and signature), including theory, applications, systems, and surveys. Prof. Chen will help EiC in selecting best papers and organising special issues in the newly emerging areas within the scope of T-BIOM.

COMP x CAA Academic-Industry Seminar Series – Data Analytics (Jun 2022)

Committed to encouraging knowledge exchange between academia and industry, COMP and the Computing Alumni Association (CAA) co-organised the fourth seminar of the "COMP x CAA Academic-Industry Seminar Series" via Zoom on 21 June 2022. With more than 100 participants comprising our students, faculty members and alumni, the seminar was started with a warm welcome by Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP. Dr Chan then introduced the first speaker, Dr Ken Yiu, Associate Professor, to present his research about approximate range aggregate queries with error guarantees. The research was published at the EDBT conference in 2021. Ken demonstrated different examples and models to introduce the application of range aggregate query. His research interest includes databases, in particular, query processing techniques for spatiotemporal data and multi-dimensional data. Mr Gary Tang, Associate Data Scientist of OOCL, at the same time an outstanding graduate of COMP, was invited to share practical experience with the data science industry. Gary showed great interest in a data science career before he graduated from COMP. He shared his insight into the future trend, roles and duties of a data scientist and the challenges. At the end of his presentation, he provided handy tips on how to equip oneself in the job searching process. The seminar was well received by the participants, who also actively participated in the Q&A session and were especially interested in the data science career path. We believe the seminar can inspire students who wish to pursue development in this field.

COMP Best Project Award Competition 2022

COMP successfully organised the online Best Project Award Competition on 18 June 2022 to recognise students’ outstanding performance in their Capstone Projects. Six shortlisted students joined the final contest and competed for the awards. The panel of judges was formed by our faculty members and representatives from the technology sector, including Hong Kong Cyberport, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, and InfoTech Services (HK) Limited. Each student was given fifteen minutes to present the project, finish a demonstration and undergo Q&A. All the projects fully demonstrated the depth of background study, breadth of the design and methodology, as well as excellent implementation and evaluation. Also, the high level of presentation skills shown by students was impressive.   After careful and thorough consideration, our judges selected the winners and a virtual award presentation ceremony was held accordingly. In addition to the Best Project Awards, two contestants were selected to receive the InfoTech Job Market Driven Scholarship, based on the quality and relevancy of their projects in adopting hot skills highly sought by the IT industry. We are proud to present the awardees here and let’s take this opportunity to congratulate them on receiving the awards.   Award Project Title Awardee Champion InfoTech Job Market Driven  Scholarship Touch-free User Interaction Wang Ka Man First Runner-up Award Enhancement of Amblyopia Treatment and Monitoring in Children via an Ocular Gymnastics Application German Sharabok Second Runner-up Award InfoTech Job Market Driven Scholarship Game Development Lee Chi Kin

COMP Career talk cum Mentorship Gathering

COMP and the Computing Alumni Association (CCA) co-organised a career talk cum mentorship gathering on 13 May 2022. The topic of the career talk this time was “Coding in Action: from TDD to BDD”, which covered an overview of practical software development. The event echoed the mentorship kick-off in January 2022 which aims to prepare students for future careers and line students up with professional practitioners and industry executives. Dr Hong-va Leong, our Associate Professor and Associate Head (Teaching & Learning) gave a warm welcome to all the participants. Ms Silvia Ihensekhien, Hon. Secretary of Computing Alumni Association (CAA), at the same time a mentor, then introduced the speaker Mr Raymond Cheung. Raymond is a Software Engineer at Societe Generale and an alumnus of COMP. He has extensive experience in developing various scalable systems in risk management and trade captures, such as pre-trade negotiation services of equity derivative trading; data pipelines to ingest and transform data and trade captures optimisation. Raymond is now based in London and joined us online to share first-hand experience in the overseas job market and some useful tips for interviews. In the Q&A session, Raymond further discussed the future work trends in the IT industry, and it was delightful to see the active participation of our students. The talk was engaging and inspiring, which provided students with more insights into career development. Various breakout rooms were arranged for both mentees and mentors to exchange ideas and gain personal advice. We hope that students can keep up the momentum and strengthen their skills to stand out in the competitive job market.

COMP x CAA Academic-Industry Seminar Series – Cybersecurity (Apr 2022)

The third seminar of the "COMP x CAA Academic-Industry Seminar Series" was held virtually on 27 April with the topic of “Cybersecurity”. Around one hundred students and alumni participated in the session. The seminar series is co-organised by COMP and the Computing Alumni Association (CAA) to encourage knowledge exchange between academia and industry. Dr Daniel Luo, Associate Professor of COMP, started the seminar with his recent research on defending against sophisticated mobile malware. He is known for his expertise in mobile security and smart contract security in Hong Kong, and his research interests include mobile, IoT and system security and privacy, blockchain and smart contract security, as well as network security and privacy. He introduced their systems that can unpack hardened mobile malware and their proof-of-concept (PoC) tool that demonstrates how easily mobile malware can evade existing detection approaches. The industrial speaker this time was Ms Silvia Ihensekhien, Chief Information Security Officer of ShipServ, at the same time an awardee of 2019 COMP Alumni Award and mentor from COMP. Silvia is one of the few female leaders in the shipping eCommerce industry in Hong Kong, her hands-on experience in internet security is also well recognised. She gave an in-depth introduction to ransomware - one of the most common cyber-attacks, and provided helpful advice on how to prevent ransomware attacks. In the discussion that followed, our faculty members concurred that cybersecurity is critical and found new angles on cybersecurity applications. Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head (Partnership & Collaboration) of COMP hosted the seminar and Q&A session.

MSc in Blockchain Technology Info Seminar 2022

The Info Seminar for MSc in Blockchain Technology (MScBT) was smoothly concluded on 11 May 2022, attracting more than 120 participants. The Info Seminar was delivered on Zoom and live-streamed in Mainland China. Dr Xavier de Carné de Carnavalet, Research Assistant Professor, started the info seminar with a brief introduction to the background and applications of Blockchain Technology in the industry and Metaverse. Dr Korris Chung, Associate Professor, gave an overview of the Department of Computing, while Dr Daniel Luo, Associate Professor and Programme Leader, further explained the programme structure and curriculum. MScBT is the first taught master programme in Hong Kong specialising in Blockchain technology. It is designed for professionals proficient in blockchain and related technologies to analyse, design, implement and evaluate Fintech and other related systems, products and services. The programme also covers key Fintech technologies and applications. Blockchain technology was emphasised by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority in its “Fintech 2025” strategy and the “Enhanced Competency Framework on Fintech” launched last year, which has demonstrated the great potential of this area. Upon completion of this programme, graduates will be equipped with the knowledge and skill set that could enhance their competitiveness in the career market.