News

COMP Research Teams Won in the 2018 Creative Software System Contest

On 25 - 26 July, two COMP research teams under the supervision of Dr Shuai Li participated in the 2018 Creative Software System Contest in Taiwan and won the First Prize and Merit Award based on the innovativeness, functionality and application, feasibility and interface of their projects. Mr Guohao Fu and Mr Xiangyuan Jiang won the First Prize with the project titled “Source Seeking of a Mobile Robot with Manipulator for Chemical Leakage”. In view of the Mexico oil spill incident few years ago and its hazardous impact to the environment, the team designed a more effective estimation-based control for source exploration in olfactory propagation fields by explicitly using random exploration strategy and employing mobile robot manipulator. Another project “A Solution for Automatic Physical Parameter Measurement of Industrial Manipulators” proposed by Mr Aquil Mirza Mohammed and Mr Yinyan Zhang received the Merit Award. The solution involves an online learning and control algorithm that could allow users to control the end-effector position of an industrial manipulator while learning its physical parameters. The expected product consists of a motion controller with some sensors for end-effector detection. The competition was hosted by the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering of Tamkang University and it covered topics related to smart computing, unmanned vehicle applications, smart agriculture, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and smart medical care, attracting more than 200 participants from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.

The 5th Computer App Programming (CAP) Day

CAP Day is an annual competition jointly organised by COMP and the Hong Kong Association for Computer Education (HKACE), with the support of IEEE Hong Kong Section Computer Society Chapter. To train up student’s programming and computing skills, CAP Day includes “Problem-solving Competition” and “Student Project Competition”. In the preliminary round of the Problem-solving Competition conducted earlier in May, a hundred students from 23 secondary schools with the highest scores were qualified to enter the finals held at PolyU on 14 July. Contestants had to complete mobile apps in 90 minutes by using App Inventor in order to strive for the championship. The participants of the Student Project Competition also presented their projects to the judges on that day and the three winning teams were from HKTA The Yuen Yuen Institute No.1 Secondary School, Po Leung Kuk Laws Foundation College and Lok Sin Tong Ku Chiu Man Secondary School. Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP and Dr David Chung, JP, Under Secretary of the Innovation and Technology Bureau officiated the closing ceremony and presented trophies and prizes to the winners. Mr Wai Ming Kam, Chairman of HKACE and Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP also joined the ceremony. CAP Day provides an excellent platform for teenagers to learn about programming techniques, solve practical problems by logical thinking, develop computational knowledge, and foster creativity and teamwork.

Visit of Beijing University of Technology

A group of 30 students from Beijing University of Technology visited COMP on 24 July. Prof. Jane You, Professor & Associate Head, met the students at the opening and introduced the Department and research studies. Dr Simon Shiu, Assistant Professor and Scheme Leader of Taught Postgraduate Programme, gave an overview of our Master of Science programmes and offered some advices on admission and prospect. We also invited some research students to share their postgraduate study experience at computing. That evening, the group had a guided tour to PolyU House of Innovation and other facilities around the campus. On 27 July, Prof. Keith Chan, Associate Professor, arranged a One-day Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for the visiting students. Topics covered the latest AI technology, Python programming and chatbot. At the end of the workshop, Prof. Qin Lu, Professor & Interim Head, presented certificates to all attendees.

Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) 2017

We are proud to announce that two of our academics, Dr Korris Chung, Associate Professor and Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor & Associate Head, who were involved in two different research projects received the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) from the Ministry of Education on 14 April to honour their contributions and discoveries made in natural science. Congratulations to Dr Chung and Prof. Zhang! Award Project Title Awardee Second-class Award in Natural Science 神經模糊系統建模中的聚類、知識利用和學習方法 Dr Korris Chung First-class Award in Natural Science 視覺信息的表示學習理論與方法 Prof. Lei Zhang

COMP graduates won First Class Award in China Pan-Pearl River Delta Region IT Project Competition 2018

A team formed by COMP graduates, Mr Leung Yik Kan, Miss Ng Tin Yan, Mr So Chak Hei and Miss Tan Karen Kristine was nominated by Internet Professional Association (iProA) to participate in the 13th edition of China Pan-Pearl River Delta Region IT Project Competition held in Macau on 3 – 4 July. The team competed among 60 teams from more than 200 colleges and universities in different locations of China, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong. Finally, they won the First Class Award with their project “Marketemy - Simulation Game for Learning of Digital Marketing” under the supervision of Dr Richard Lui, Teaching Fellow of COMP. Marketemy is an e-marketing solution which aims to provide hands-on experience for prospective higher education students to learn digital marketing concepts through mini-games. The player, as the marketing director of an online travel agency, could promote various types of travel packages by advertising in search engines and formulate marketing decisions in social media to generate engagement and sales. Over the years, this annual advanced IT competition has promoted the IT development and helped cultivate the best IT talents for the Pan-Pearl River Delta Region’s communities and economies. It has also gathered tertiary students in the region to exchange ideas and further develop professional competence.

COMP students attained Unity Developer certification

We are pleased to announce that 33 COMP students passed the rigorous Unity Certified Developer examination in June and attained the professional certification after joining the Unity Training/Certification Programme (TCP) launched by COMP in January. The Department gave strong support to the students by sponsoring them on the examination fees. COMP always emphasises the integration of tertiary education with emerging industry practice. Thus to get students well-prepared for the certification, the six-month training programme not only covered examination materials but also included sharing and workshops by Unity evangelists and experts, and game developers from Tencent, Kingsoft and other local games companies. Unity Developer was ranked number 7 on LinkedIn's Top 20 Emerging Jobs in the US in 2017. The certification further recognises our students’ knowledge and technical skills that meet the industry standards and facilitates their career development in the games industry.

PolyU Computing Graduate Employment Survey 2017

The latest PolyU Graduate Employment Survey was released recently. The average starting salary of COMP graduates reached HK$17,409, which is the second highest in the Faculty of Engineering. Among all the COMP respondents, the top three monthly salaries range from HK$30,000 to HK$34,000. As computing plays an important role in all businesses, our graduates started their career in a wide range of areas, such as IT, FinTech, Healthcare, Government, Logistics, Business Services, Telecom, Digital Marketing, Multimedia and Entertainment, etc. In other words, studying computing allows students to develop their career in many different business sectors. COMP introduced a new internship option this year, allowing students to gain up to 32 weeks full-time working experience while still graduating in four years. This will further strengthen students’ employability. Top Salary Examples of COMP Graduates in 2017 Industry Job Scope Average Monthly Salary Financial Institution Information Technology HK$34,000 Retail - Consumer Product Store Management HK$33,000 Software Consultancy R&D Engineering HK$30,000 Software Consultancy R&D Engineering HK$27,600 Healthcare Programming HK$27,100 Healthcare Programming HK$26,400 Software Consultancy Programming HK$23,000 Electronics Programming HK$23,000 Telecommunications Marketing HK$21,600 Electronics Programming HK$21,500 Electronic Payment System Engineering HK$20,800  

COMP staff received a Best Paper Award at ACM e-Energy 2018

We are pleased to announce that our Associate Professor Dr Dan Wang and his research team received a Best Paper Award at the ninth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (ACM e-Energy) held in Germany from 12 - 15 June, for the paper titled “Data Driven Chiller Sequencing for Reducing HVAC Electricity Consumption in Commercial Buildings”. This paper presents a data-driven platform that can substantially improve the efficiency of HVAC operations. The core insight is to analyse the HVAC performance in run-time, so as to control HVAC operations in fine-granularity. This paper lands the general industry AIOps concept with one specific case in HVAC industry. The evaluation using data from One, Two and Three Pacific Place at Admiralty shows a potential annual cost saving of HK$2.7 million. ACM e-Energy aims to be the premier venue for researchers working in the broad areas of computing and communication for smart energy systems (including the smart grid), and in energy-efficient computing and communication systems. By bringing together researchers in a high-quality single-track conference with significant opportunities for individual and small-group interaction, it serves as a major forum for presentations and discussions that will shape the future of this area.

COMP Workshops for JUPAS Applicants

Following the successful initiative last year, thematic workshops on Virtual Reality (VR) and Cyber Security were held on both 21 June and 26 June, attracting over a hundred JUPAS applicants to attend. The VR workshops covered topics on Projection VR, Cave System, Editor Basics, Game Objects Models and Materials, Scripting Primer, and Interactive Motion Sensing, etc. Participants were able to learn about the skills of creating an interactive VR application with a Google Cardboard, which they found it very interesting. During the Cyber Security workshops, topics including Shift Cipher and Substitution, Cryptography, Encryption Method, IoT Security and Malware Analysis were introduced. There were some in-class exercises for the students to practise code breaking and encryption technique. In addition to the workshops, we arranged few consultation sessions for these students to meet with our academic advisors, answering their questions about JUPAS admission. Participants enjoyed the classes very much as they were given the opportunities to gain new learning experience at university as well as further foster their interests towards computer science and information technology.

Big Datathon 2018 @ PolyU

Co-organised by PolyU and Radica, “Big Datathon” – an annual hackathon event focusing on the application of big data, data analytics, and data science was successfully held at PolyU on 26 - 27 May. This competition gathered real business challenges and data from real companies for contestants to solve. It attracted over 150 university students, graduates, working professionals and startups. A team of three COMP students (Ka Yu Chan, Tsz Hin Chan and Cheuk Yin Wong) won the PolyU Champion Award with their project “Course Designer”. On the first competition day, 43 teams of 2 to 5 were formed and each team selected one of the business challenges provided by PolyU, Radica and UBS respectively. By using fresh data and advanced tools, participants worked together in 24 hours to solve the data problems or pain points happening in the real business world. The team projects were evaluated by a panel of judges from academia and industry under four key criteria including quality of data crawling, creativity and innovation, demonstration of capability, and communication skills. Ten teams became finalists and competed for the PolyU / Radica / UBS Champion Awards, Best Data Hunter Award, Most Innovative Award and Best Presentation Award. Big Datathon provides a great platform for data talents to put their technical knowledge into practice and on the other hand, for corporates to kick-off their big data projects and access to potential solutions.