News

COMP 45th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture Series

COMP launched the “Distinguished Lecture Series” in celebration of its 45th anniversary and the first lecture “AI at Dawn - opportunities and challenges” by Prof. Dacheng Tao, Professor of Computer Science at The University of Sydney, was held on 11 March at PolyU with a full house participation. Prof. Tao reviewed the recent progress on Artificial Intelligence (AI) by introducing some representative advancements from algorithms to applications, and illustrated the stairs for its realization from perceiving to learning, reasoning and behaving. He also brought some examples of AI challenges and share his insights and perspectives with the attendees. To read the poster of the seminar, please click here. Throughout 2019, we will invite renowned scholars and researchers to deliver Distinguished Lectures on a wide range of hot IT topics, including AI, Big Data, Social Media, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing.

Research Grants Council Collaborative Research Fund Project Kick-off Ceremony

Today the Department of Computing (COMP) hosted the Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) Project Kick-off Ceremony at PolyU for the project “Multi-sourced Event Detection and Multi-dimensional Analysis based on Event Cube”. Coordinated by Prof. Qing Li, Chair Professor of Data Science and Head of COMP, the project was granted over HK$5.3 million from the Research Grants Council in 2018/19. At the ceremony, under the witness of our Officiating Guest, Prof. Guohua Chen, Associate Vice President (Research Support) of PolyU, Prof. Li signed a collaborative agreement with the Co-Principal Investigators: Prof. Lei Chen from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Prof. Ho-fung Leung from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Dr Nancy Yu from the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, City University of Hong Kong; and Dr Hong-va Leong, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP. Social media plays a vital role in affecting public opinions and policy making, and topics like event detection and mining, public sentiment analysis, etc., become increasingly hot in social science and financial research. Targeting at youngsters suicide detection, this CRF project aims to provide insight on event detection and prediction underlying the Big Data. The project team proposes to develop techniques for untargeted event detection (UED) and targeted event detection (TED) from multi-sourced data, and build event cube models to support various event queries and analysis thereon.

Faculty of Engineering Awards Presentation Ceremony 2017/18

Congratulations to four COMP academic staff on receiving Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Awards 2017/18 in recognition of their excellent performance and achievements in research and scholarly activities. Prof. H.C. Man, Dean of FENG, officiated the Spring Reception cum Faculty Awards Presentation Ceremony on 22 February. Dr Miranda Lou, Executive Vice President, and Prof. Alex Wai, Vice President (Research Development), presented certificates to the awardees. Faculty members and industry guests were also invited to share the joy together.   Awardee Award Prof. CAO Jiannong, Chair Professor Research Grant Achievement Award 2017 Dr KUMAR Ajay, Associate Professor Faculty Outstanding Award in Research and Scholarly Activities (Individual) 2017/18 Dr YIU Ken, Associate Professor Research Grant Achievement Award 2017 Prof. ZHANG Lei, Chair Professor Research Grant Achievement Award 2017

PolyU Long Service Award 2018

PolyU Long Service Award scheme has been introduced since 1990 to foster a sense of belonging among PolyU staff members. This year, we are glad to announce that seven COMP staff members were honoured for their dedicated services to the University over the years. On 22 February, Prof. Philip Chan, Interim President of PolyU, officiated the award presentation ceremony at Jockey Club Auditorium by expressing his gratitude to all long-serving staff who contribute significantly to the University. Awardee Position Dr CHAN Henry Associate Professor and Associate Head Mr CHEE Anthony Technical Officer Mr CHIU Ting Shing Assistant Technical Officer Mr LEUNG Frankie Technical Officer Prof. LU Qin Professor Dr XIAO Bin Associate Professor Prof. YOU Jane Professor and Associate Head

Outstanding Student Awards Presentation Ceremony 2018

Congratulations to Miss Ying Jiao, our final year student of BSc (Hons) in Computing, on receiving the “Outstanding Student Award of Department” for her excellent academic performance, active involvement in extra-curricular activities and good personal qualities. The Outstanding Students Award Scheme is one of the most prestigious award schemes in PolyU which is set up to recognise high achievers. Prof. Philip Chan, Interim President of PolyU, officiated the awards presentation ceremony today and presented the Certificate of Award to the top undergraduate students who excel in both academic and non-academic pursuits. Miss Jiao has not only maintained a decent academic profile but also participated in co-curricular activities enthusiastically and provided volunteer services to PolyU over the past years. Her leadership ability can be demonstrated by organising events for Chinese Mainland Students’ Association and leading the project group in a Service-Learning subject. Miss Jiao is planning to pursue further study after graduation and aims at making contributions to facilitate mankind’s life by exploring new IT technologies in her future career.

Global Game Jam 2019

Organised by Cyberport, COMP and School of Design of PolyU, the fourth Global Game Jam (GGJ) Hong Kong was successfully held at Cyberport from 25 to 27 January, attracting over 400 students and professional game designers to create 73 games under the global theme of “What Home Means to You”. This year, over 47,000 jammers from 860 jam sites located in 113 countries participated. In the time span of 48 hours, participants formed teams and completed full game development cycle from ideation to testing, including game design, programming, sound design, and user interface configuration. The best teams in nine different categories were awarded. The GGJ is the world's largest game jam event taking place around the globe at physical locations, providing a creative platform for talented individuals to contribute to game development. It encourages participants to foster new friendship, increases their confidence and boosts opportunities within the community.

Masters of Abstraction - Laureates of Mathematics and Computer Science

COMP is celebrating its 45th anniversary in 2019. To foster strong bonding and connection between our students, alumni, staff members, industry partners and stakeholders, a range of meaningful activities will be organised. On 18 January, COMP co-hosted “Masters of Abstraction - Laureates of Mathematics and Computer Science” with the Department of Applied Mathematics (AMA) as one of the celebratory events. Prof. Guohua Chen, Associate Vice President (Research Support) of PolyU delivered his welcoming remarks and officiated the opening of the forum together with the management of Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation and representatives from the organiser and co-organisers. Under the theme of “How AI and Big Data are Driving Innovation”, five laureates of ACM A.M. Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing and Fields Medal were invited to share their experience and achievements in academic research and their views of scientific development. Followed the laureates’ speeches, two panel discussions led by laureates, local and overseas scholars gave the audience inspirational and fruitful insights on the impact of growing adoption of artificial intelligence and big data. During the Sharing Session, Dr David Chung, JP, Under Secretary for Innovation and Technology of the HKSAR Government shared about the government’s recent development and new initiatives of smart city. To further arouse the visitors’ interests in mathematics and computer science, there was a poster showcase demonstrating AMA and COMP students’ research work, offering a good opportunity for the attendees to interact with our research students. The forum successfully provided an excellent platform for young researchers, university students and teenagers to meet the laureates, aiming at increasing the awareness of the public on the importance of science and technology in the advancement of our society.

Faculty of Engineering External Grants Achievement Awards 2017

We are proud to announce that Prof. Jiannong Cao, Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing, Dr Ken Yiu, Associate Professor, and Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor of Computer Vision and Image Analysis, received the Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Research Grant Achievement Award 2017. Since 2003, the Faculty Research Committee has set up FENG Research Grant Achievement Award and FENG Industrial and Engineering Services Grant Achievement Award to recognise the outstanding performance of FENG academic staff members in securing external competitive 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. Congratulations to Prof. Cao, Dr Yiu and Prof. Zhang for their achievements!

ITU’s Second Workshop and Meeting of Focus Group Technologies for Network 2030

COMP successfully hosted the second workshop and meeting of Focus Group Technologies for Network 2030 (FG NET-2030) with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) at PolyU on 18 – 20 December. Prof. Alexander Wai, Vice President (Research Development) of PolyU, delivered his welcome address at the opening. During this three-day event, participants shared their opinions, insights and latest research findings about telecommunication networks in the year 2030 and beyond. Both workshop and group technical discussions promoted stimulating and constructive exchanges, and inspired new and practicable ideas in the field. To cope with the ever-growing demand for faster data access nowadays, the FG NET-2030 aims at bringing different national standard bodies, regulators, industrial partners, ICT service providers, research organizations and academia together, exploring and formulating all aspects of Network 2030 that support the future generations of IoT and enhance the digital development of societies. Please click here to watch the video of the meeting.

Highly Cited Researchers 2018

We are proud to announce that Prof. David Zhang, Emeritus Professor (Intelligent Computing), and Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor of Computer Vision and Image Analysis, were recognized in Clarivate Analytics’ list of Highly Cited Researchers 2018 for their exceptional impact in the field of Engineering. It was the fifth time on the list for Prof. David Zhang while Prof. Lei Zhang was named for the fourth consecutive year. The Highly Cited Researchers list recognizes world-class researchers selected for their exceptional research performance, demonstrated by production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science. Congratulations to Prof. David Zhang and Prof. Lei Zhang!