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Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition at PolyU

The Faculty of Engineering (FENG) of PolyU held its first Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT®) on 18 June, challenging the research students nominated by their affiliated departments in FENG to present their research theses within three minutes. COMP’s representative, Hou Ningning, won the ‘People’s Choice Award’ with her thesis titled “‘LoRa, can I trust you?’ Security threats and countermeasures in IoT”. The award was voted by the audience online after all students’ presentation. The Internet of Things (IoT) is changing human lives. More and more daily objects are connected to the Internet, making them become smarter and offer better services. However, as with many technologies, there are questions of its future and implications on society, especially IoT security. IoT devices are usually embedded devices that have limited resources for security, and traditional security solutions will not run on these devices. Therefore, the communication security of IoT devices will be a big problem in the future. Ningning’s thesis focuses on security problems in IoT, LoRa security, in particular. LoRa is a promising IoT communication technology that can transmit up to 3 km in an urban environment, while other IoT tech like WiFi and Bluetooth can only transmit no more than 50 metres. As such, LoRa is suitable for wide-area communication. In the research, Ningning investigates the potential security threats of LoRa and proposes the corresponding countermeasures against such attacks. “Today, organisations usually deploy IoT with security and privacy as an afterthought. I hope my research can raise the awareness of the government, industry as well as end-users,” Ningning said. “I would like to thank all my friends and my supervisor for helping me prepare for this competition. My sincere thanks also go to all the audience who vote for me.” Developed by the University of Queensland, Australia, 3MT® cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills, as well as supports their capacity to effectively explain their research and its significance in three minutes, in a language appropriate to non-specialist audiences. 3MT® is now a globally recognised competition that has been held in over 900 universities across more than 80 countries worldwide. PolyU is one of the participating universities this year.

COMP undergraduate shined in the Chun Wo Innovation Student Awards 2020

Declan Leung Chun-hin (BSc (Hons) in Enterprise Information Systems, Year 4) teamed up with another PolyU student from the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences to join the Chun Wo Innovation Student Awards 2020 and finally won the Silver Award and Best Business Potential Award with their project “Smart Bracelet”. Hong Kong is transitioning slowly into an ageing populated society. Every elderly (aged 65+) is currently supported by 3.5 working adults but this number is expected to decrease to less than 2 by 2030. It is estimated that 25% of the elderly people fall more than once in a year while a timely response within the first two hours is highly important for them as it increases their survival rate beyond one year by up to 35%. However, fewer caregivers resulted from a lower birth rate and more elderly choosing to live independently cause a rise in elderly fall which becomes one of the stress factors for the caregivers and society as a whole. “We are excited to turn our innovative idea into a gerontech product that assists the daily life of the elderly,” Declan shared. “We hope that both the well-being of the elderly can be enhanced and the burden of caregivers can be relieved.” The Chun Wo Innovation Student Awards aims at encouraging tertiary students in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area to solve problems relating to infrastructure, technology and social development in the city through an engineering approach. This year over 70 teams participated in the competition under the theme of “Engineers for a Smart Future”.

Prof. Song Guo named the Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering

We are proud to announce that Prof. Song Guo, Professor and Associate Head (Research & Development) of COMP, was recently named Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), the national institution of Canada that comprises its most accomplished engineers who have expressed their dedication to the application of science and engineering principles. Fellows of CAE are nominated and elected by their peers. In view of their outstanding contributions to engineering, and for the service as role models in their fields and to their communities, a total of 52 new Fellows from all over the world were elected into the Academy this year. Prof. Guo is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Member and a Highly Cited Researcher 2020. With over 500 papers published in major conferences and journals, Prof. Guo’s work in cloud computing, edge artificial intelligence, big data and distributed systems has had a broad and seminal impact – from the advancement of scientific knowledge to industrial innovation. He has been widely recognised for his pioneering contributions to the resilient management system used in post-disaster applications. Congratulations to Prof. Guo on attaining this honour.

COMP Best Project Award Competition 2021

To recognise students’ outstanding performance in their Capstone Projects, COMP hosted the online Best Project Award Competition on 5 June. Among this year’s projects, five students were shortlisted to compete for the awards. Apart from our faculty members, we invited experienced executives from the technology sector including Hong Kong Cyberport, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, and InfoTech Services to form a panel of judges. Each student was given fifteen minutes for presentation and Q&A. The judging criteria included project background study, design or methodology, implementation, evaluation, video demonstration and presentation skills. The panel agreed that it was a tough decision as all participants were very well-prepared and able to demonstrate their ideas concisely and respond confidently. 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. This annual competition not only gives an opportunity for the students to showcase their excellent work but also allows them to interact with industry professionals and gain direct insights to further refine their projects.

COMP research student received a Silver Prize at the Huawei Logistics Competition

To promote research and application on real-world problems related to Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization (MOCO) such as Vehicle Routing and Bin Packing, Huawei Technologies organized a “Logistics Competition” at the 11th International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization (EMO 2021). The competition attracted over 485 participants to compete in two tracks with real business scenarios generated by Huawei. Mr Han Zhang, our research student, received a Silver Prize of Track 1 in the competition with his project titled “Solving Combinatorial Optimization Problems in Smart Logistics Based on Meta-heuristic Algorithms” under the supervision of Prof. Qing Li, our Chair Professor and Head. In the real-world logistics and supply chain management systems, many combinatorial optimization problems occur and the number of solutions increases exponentially with the scale of the problems. In this project, some common problems in smart logistics including facility location problem (FLP), capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), pickup and delivery problem (PDP), and three-dimensional container loading problem (3D-CL) were expected to be formulated as the combinatorial optimization problems which could be solved effectively and efficiently by the meta-heuristic algorithms. “Prof. Qing Li is very nice and patient and he gives me very useful guidance about how to do research, as well as how to analyze and solve problems step by step. Under his supervision, I enjoy the research journey very much,” Han shared. Being one of the top three winners, Han was also invited to give a spot-light talk at EMO 2021.

COMP undergraduate won a Champion Award at the HKGCC Business Case Competition 2020

Congratulations to our undergraduate, Mr Romeo Ng, and his team members on winning the Champion Award at the Business Case Competition 2020 organised by the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce (HKGCC). A total of 900 tertiary students in Hong Kong submitted proposals to crack the real-life business cases developed by five Chamber member companies including Citibank, Great Eagle Group, NEC, NWS Holdings Limited and Sino Group. Romeo teamed up with four other university students of diverse disciplines to join the “Sino Group” track. Under the theme of “Wellness Living for the Community”, the team had to figure out how the real estate industry could shape a positive environment that keeps the community happy, healthy and safe with the use of technology. With increasing attention on human well-being under COVID-19, the team proposed a residential project named “The Halcyon” which aimed to cultivate a sustainable lifestyle and culture that promoting both the physical and mental wellness of the residents, as well as helping them to build genuine connections within the neighbourhood through Property Technology (PropTech). Leveraging the IoT devices and beacons, the team designed a mobile app that provided different essential analysis and AI-driven automation for the residents. They also introduced various countermeasures to minimize the risks and concerns towards PropTech, preventing discomfort from the end-users and increasing their acceptance. Romeo’s team ultimately won the Champion of the track with their outstanding performance in the areas of innovativeness, feasibility, impact and presentation skills. “Winning the HKGCC Business Case Competition has been an exciting and remarkable experience for me,” said Romeo. “As a COMP student, I did feel the challenge of competing with other business-major students. A case competition like this was a rare opportunity for me to get out of my comfort zone and had a glimpse of the business world”.

COMP Alumni Award Presentation

The COMP Alumni Award aims to recognize and publicly honour outstanding alumni who have demonstrated significant contributions to their professions or careers, the Department, the University and the community. It is believed that this award will motivate COMP students to learn from the experience and success of the awardees as well as reflect the Department’s model of education: Career, Application, Research and Entrepreneurship (CARE). On 29 May 2021, we hosted the COMP Alumni Award Presentation and invited Dr Miranda Lou, Executive Vice President of PolyU, to present the awards to the following recipients: Mr CHUNG Wai Kit Tony Vice President (Data Services), Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd. Dr GU Shuhang Lecturer, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Sydney, Australia Ms IHENSEKHIEN Lam Siu Han Silvia Chief Information Security Officer, ShipServ Dr LAM Hang Yat Abraham Chief Executive Officer, MEGA Automation Ltd. Director, Shenzhen FUSQUARE Technology Ltd Mr LAU Shiu Fung Programmer, Fame Key Technology Limited Mr SUN Kin Kwok Darron Head of Information Technology, Hong Kong Housing Society (To view the biography of awardees, please click here) We also took this opportunity to invite Prof. H.C. Man, Dean of Faculty of Engineering of PolyU, to present Certificate of Appreciation to our alumni mentors on this meaningful occasion, in recognition of their contributions over the last year on providing mentoring activities for our undergraduates. To encourage our students to acquire the skills for career planning and personal development, we have introduced the COMP Mentorship Programme in collaboration with the Computing Alumni Association (CAA) since 2019. Mentees could know about workplace culture, business trends and prospects in established professions from the industrial mentors, widening their exposure to different career paths and options.

The 6th China International College Students’ 'Internet Plus' Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition

Under the supervision of Prof. Song Guo, Professor and Associate Head (Research & Development), our research student, Mr Jackal Xu, and his teammates won a Silver Award at the 6th China International College Students’ “Internet +” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition held in Hong Kong with their project named “Dr. Body”. Different degrees of deformation may occur on a human’s spine and legs, especially among adolescents, resulting from poor posture. Facing this chronic illness, initial screening is particularly important. “Dr. Body” aims to provide teens with flexible and convenient screening, diagnosis and tracking on their postures. The body images collected from offline scanning will be first analysed through image processing and algorithmic calculus. Then a three-dimensional body model is reconstructed and matched against the medical clinical parameters for health analysis. “Dr. Body” is a radiation-free and one-stop Internet of Things (IoT) platform that could achieve preliminary body posture assessment, suggest the need for rehabilitation and customise follow-up services with a health management app. “Through the competition, we have organised our entrepreneurial ideas more clearly and we have seen many other good projects which broadened our horizons,” Jackal shared. “I hope that in the future, Dr. Body can further develop to help more young people to get rid of physical sub-health problems and grow up healthily!”. To invite the young talents to share their entrepreneurial ideas, the Ministry of Education has hosted the competition since 2015, and it has become one of the world’s largest innovation and entrepreneurship competitions for college students.

PolyU Outstanding Students Award 2020

We are glad to announce that Mr Xiaochuan Xu, our final year student of BSc (Hons) in Computing, has received the honour of the “Outstanding Student Award of Department” for his exceptional accomplishments in both academic and non-academic pursuits during his study. Prof. Jin-Guang Teng, President of PolyU, officiated the Outstanding Student Award Presentation Ceremony on 12 March and presented the award certificates to the top undergraduate students. PolyU organises the Outstanding Students Award Scheme annually and it is one of the most prestigious award schemes which is set up to recognise high achievers. Xiaochuan is a self-motivated and hardworking student. His decent academic profile, active involvement in extra-curricular activities and good personal qualities have equipped him to be an all-rounder. He was included several times in the Dean’s Honors List and won numerous competitive scholarships. Besides, he enthusiastically participated in co-curricular activities including outbound exchange to the USA, overseas internship in France, external competitions and community services. Xiaochuan also provided extensive services to the University such as assisting in PolyU Education Information Day, Buddy Programme, Orientation Programme for non-local students and PolyU SOAR Global Youth Leadership Programme as well as serving as the General Secretary for PolyU Chinese Mainland Students’ Association in which his strong leadership skills were well-demonstrated. “In the past four years at COMP, I have gained not only solid academic knowledge in computer science and hands-on experience in using emerging computing technologies but also have acquired a clear vision of my career goal through the communications with the professors and many reaching out opportunities,” Xiaochuan shared. “In the future, I would like to become a prominent system architect working in the world-renowned Internet juggernauts.” Congratulations to Xiaochuan on receiving the honour!

COMP career talk on “Preparing to build a professional journey”

Under the COMP Mentorship Programme 2020/21, an online career talk on “Preparing to build a professional journey” was organised on 5 March. We invited one of our mentors and alumni, Mr Andy Wan, Director and Head of Transformation of AXA Hong Kong and Macau, to share his career journey and the major changes that evolve to his role today. Andy graduated from PolyU in 2000 with a higher diploma in Information Systems and a degree in Computing in 2004. Having worked in two Fortune Global 500 multi-national insurance companies, he has been focusing on the Financial Services Industry for 20 years with experience across various domains like technology, operations, distribution, project management, digital and business transformation in the local office as well as in the regional office. Built his career from the ground up as an IT programmer, Andy began the career talk with the differences between a job and a career. He shared how he stepped on the career ladder from a starter to a leader and how he made his decision when facing choices in his career path. Andy also advised students to enhance both technical and soft skills before graduation as well as the ways of preparing for a job search. Moderated by Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP, a panel discussion on “How to prepare for a professional career?” was held after the talk. The attendees obtained practical guidance in the rich and thought-provoking discussion with the mentors. The mentoring activities aim at fostering a strong bond among the mentors and the students, allowing them to learn from the industrial alumni and seek professional advice on personal development.