News

UG Student Achieved the Top Spot in Cloud Track of Huawei ICT Competition 2023-2024

COMP Year 2 student, XIANG Muze along with two teammates from PolyU, formed a team “PCG” who secured the First Prize in the Cloud Track of the Huawei ICT Competition 2023-2024. The instructor of the team was Mr CAO Mingpei, COMP PhD student. XIANG Muze expressed his gratitude for the unwavering support from PolyU and COMP for providing a solid educational foundation and a nurturing environment that contributed to his success. He also extended heartfelt thanks to his mentor, Mr CAO Mingpei, for the profound impact on his personal and professional growth. This competition aims to foster the healthy development of the ICT talent ecosystem and promote the integration of industry and education. With a focus on IT technologies like cloud computing, big data, storage, and AI, this year's competition provided students with an opportunity to enhance their ICT knowledge, practical skills, and innovative abilities. The competition received support from 11 tertiary institutions in Hong Kong, attracting nearly 900 participants. Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:表格內文; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Prof. Xiao Bin has been Elected as IEEE Fellow for 2024

Our professor, Prof. XIAO Bin has been elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) for the year 2024. This prestigious recognition is in tribute to his outstanding contributions to the field of wireless and system security. Prof. Xiao joined COMP in 2003 and is currently a Professor in the Department. His research interests include AI security, data privacy, Web3 and blockchain systems, with a focus on AI security and model robustness, data privacy in AI and various fields, Web3 and decentralised identity (DID), blockchain security and system development. He is the associate editor of IEEE TCC, IEEE TNSE, IEEE IoTJ, IEEE ComSoc distinguished lecturer, the vice chair of IEEE ComSoc Communications and Information Security Technical Committee (CISTC), a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the ACM. IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organisation dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Fellowship is the highest grade of membership in IEEE, with the number selected each year not exceeding 0.1% of its total voting members. Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:表格內文; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Our Students Excelled at the ICPC Regional Contests and Won Four Medals

We are proud to announce that our students won multiple medals at the regional contests of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), which is renowned as one of the most influential global programming contests conducted by and for the world’s universities. It comprises local, regional, and world levels of competition, where teams compete to build new software programmes, showcasing their creativity, teamwork, innovation, and ability to perform under pressure. Eight of our undergraduate students participated in the regional contests held in Xi’an, Shenyang and Macau and have achieved great results because of their strong motivation, talents and practising efforts. The medals awarded to our students are as follows.     2023 ICPC Asia Xi’an Regional Contest (21 Oct 2023) Team 1 Yufan XIANG Silver Medal Junru CHEN Haolin ZHANG Team 2 Guanhe FU Bronze Medal Yifeng LI Hansong SUN   2023 ICPC Asia Shenyang Regional Contest (12 Nov 2023) Team Hansong SUN Bronze Medal Zhangyang YAN Le XU   2023 ICPC Asia Macau Regional Contest (19 Nov 2023) Team Yufan XIANG Silver Medal Junru CHEN Guanhe FU   Know more about ICPC: https://icpc.global/ Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:表格內文; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Our PhD students won Track 1 of the Intel Neuromorphic Deep Noise Suppression Challenge

Our PhD students, HAO Xiang and MA Chenxiang, under the supervision of our Assistant Professor, Dr WU Jibin, have triumphed over their global competitors and won the Track 1 (Algorithmic) of the Intel Neuromorphic Deep Noise Suppression Challenge (Intel N-DNS Challenge). The team will receive a prize valued at US$15,000 (approx. HK$117,000) as recognition of their achievement. The Intel N-DNS Challenge aimed to push the boundaries of noise reduction technology by encouraging algorithmic innovation that can lead to higher denoising performance while being efficient when implemented as a brain-inspired neuromorphic system. The Intel N-DNS Challenge consists of two tracks. Track 1 aimed to encourage algorithmic innovation and took place between 16 March to 18 September 2023. Track 2 aims to realise the algorithmic innovation in Track 1 on actual neuromorphic hardware and demonstrate a real-time denoising system, which will take place from Oct 2023 to Mar 2024. The winner was selected based on a holistic evaluation that assessed the audio quality, computational resource usage, solution write-up quality, innovativeness, and commercial relevance of the solutions proposed by the competing teams. HAO and MA’s solution impressed the evaluation committee by demonstrating an audio quality on par with the Intel’s current production-level system, while offering significantly reduced computational cost. The committee also highlighted their achievement of introducing a novel gated spiking neuron model with a learnable and time-varying timescale parameter that experts believe will benefit many different application domains. Additionally, their solution incorporated state-of-the-art techniques from audio denoising, including frequency partitioning, deep filtering, and a loss function to predict DNSMOS using a MetricGAN+ generative adversarial network. Their marvellous work secured them the championship of this challenge.

PolyU Computing Department Tour 2023: Sparked Inspiration among Senior Secondary Students Towards a Bright IT Future

Our department in collaboration with One Lab Incubation Limited and with the support of the Business-School Partnership Programme by the Education Bureau, successfully co-organised two sessions of the “PolyU Computing Department Tour 2023”. The events were held on 3 Nov and 16 Nov, respectively, attracting over 140 senior secondary students and their teachers. The objective of the tour was to provide students with valuable insights into the latest technologies in computing and AI, as well as career development in this field. The event featured expert guest speakers from leading multi-national IT companies. Mr Anthony LEE, Senior Director of the Oracle Technology Service Team, Hong Kong and Taiwan Region, delivered a captivating presentation on how advanced technologies contribute to the success of extreme sports teams. Mr Kenneth WONG, Business Development Team Lead of Google Cloud, shared his view on the impact of generative AI on the education industry. The event also included an IT career talk by Mr Sky TANG, Chairman of CHUNS Group, as well as our departmental outstanding alumnus. Mr TANG shared his experiences and encouraged students to explore entrepreneurship and seize opportunities in the ever-evolving world of technology. As part of the tour, participants also had the chance to explore three laboratories at PolyU, including the HiVE (Hybrid Immersive Virtual Environment Lab), Game Lab and Research Centre on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Through participating in the event, secondary school students could learn from industry pioneers and keep abreast of cutting-edge equipment and facilities available in the field, which would spark inspiration and guidance that leads them towards smart future planning.

Dr YANG Lei and his team received the Best Paper Award (Runner-Up) and Graduate Award at ACM MobiCom 2023

The research paper titled "NeRF2: Neural Radio-Frequency Radiance Fields" published by Dr Lei YANG’s team was awarded the Best Paper Award (Runner-up) at the 29th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (ACM MobiCom 2023). The co-authors of the paper are Dr Zhenlin AN, postdoctoral fellow and Ms Qingrui PAN and Mr Xiaopeng ZHAO, our PhD students. The paper proposes a model called Neural Radio-Frequency Radiance Fields (NeRF^2), which is designed to predict the propagation of Radio Frequency (RF) signals in complex environments. The team trained the NeRF^2 model with a few signal measurements to predict the behaviour of a signal at any position when the location of a transmitter is known. The study demonstrated the effectiveness of NeRF^2 in applications such as indoor localisation and 5G MIMO technology. Read the paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3570361.3592527   Additionally, the team also received a Graduate Award at ACM MobiCom 2023 for a demo developed by Dr YANG, Dr AN, Mr ZHAO and two COMP PhD students, Mr Jingyu TONG and Mr Sicong LIAO. This demo, namely “Radio Frequency Neural Networks for Wireless Sensing”, introduces an innovative architecture called RF Neural Network (RFNN) that emulates the functionalities of a conventional neural network in proximity to or within sensors. Leveraging reconfigurable metasurfaces, RFNN enables high-speed calculations on raw RF signals, offering processing capabilities at the speed of light. The initial findings highlight RFNN's potential in various wireless sensing applications, including material classification, localisation, and gesture recognition, while operating with minimal power consumption. This research holds promise for optimising the sensing capabilities of IoT devices.   ACM MobiCom is a renowned global conference focused on mobile computing and wireless networking. The conference, sponsored by ACM SIGMOBILE, showcases cutting-edge research in areas such as mobile cloud computing, 5G networks, and IoT. It is well-regarded for its rigorous review process and attracts attendees from both academia and industry.

Prof. Allen AU & Prof. Daniel LUO Honoured with BOCHK Science and Technology Innovation Prize 2023 in FinTech

The laureates of 2023 of the BOCHK Science and Technology Innovation Prize (STIP) were announced on 1 Nov. We are proud that two of our Professors, Prof. Allen AU and Prof. Daniel LUO, have been awarded the laureates of STIP in FinTech. They collaborated to develop innovative algorithms that enhance the security of blockchain ecosystems, safeguarding assets, systems, and network integrity. Their groundbreaking work has significantly influenced the advancement of financial technology applications built on blockchain platforms.   Prof. AU’s research primarily focuses on information security, privacy protection, applied cryptography, and blockchain technology and its applications. Prof. LUO's expertise lies in blockchain and smart contract security, software and system security, as well as IoT and network security. Together, their contributions have strengthened the cryptographic foundations of blockchain technology, contributing to its wider adoption and secure implementation.   Established in 2022 by the Hong Kong Alliance of Technology and Innovation, STIP aims at recognising the scholars and experts from Hong Kong and overseas who have exceptional contributions to scientific research and influence the transformation of R&D outcomes in Hong Kong. The award categories include Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Life and Health, New Materials and New Energy, Advanced Manufacturing and FinTech. The laureates of each category will receive an award of HK$2 million. This recognition not only acknowledges their research achievements but also supports the transformation of their outcomes, benefiting the scientific community and society as a whole.  

COMP Makes Significant Leap, Surging 10 Places to Secure 34th Rank in Global Ranking of Academic Subjects

We are delighted to announce that our department has achieved an impressive ranking in the ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) for the year 2023. According to the latest rankings released on 27 Oct 2023, our department has secured the 34th position globally, marking a remarkable leap from our previous ranking of 44th in 2022.   The GRAS rankings evaluate universities across 55 subjects in disciplines across Engineering, Natural Sciences, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Social Sciences. Out of over 500 universities worldwide, our department has emerged as one of the top institutions in the field of Computer Science & Engineering.   Our achievement in climbing the ranks reflects our dedication to excel in research, education and innovation. It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our academic staff, research staff, and students, who have consistently contributed to the advancement of knowledge in our field.   For more information about the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects and the complete list of rankings, please visit the official ShanghaiRanking website at https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/gras/2023/RS0210

Dr YANG Lei and his team won Best Paper Award at IEEE SECON 2023

Dr YANG Lei, our Associate Professor, along with Dr Zhenlin AN, postdoctoral fellow and Ms Qingrui PAN and Mr Xiaopeng ZHAO, our PhD students,  received Best Paper Award at IEEE SECON 2023.   Their research paper titled "Revisiting Backscatter Frequency Drifts for Fingerprinting RFIDs: A Perspective of Frequency Resolution" was honoured with the Best Paper Award at the 20th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (IEEE SECON 2023).   Researchers have been aware of the potential of utilising the backscatter frequency drift (BFD) as a unique fingerprint for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags for over a decade. By comparing the discrepancy between the actual backscatter frequency and the requested backscatter link frequency (BLF), it is possible to identify the RFID tags at the physical layer. However, the efficacy of this method has been limited due to a low success rate.   Addressing this issue, this paper suggests a new perspective on the low success rate – a low resolution in frequency measurement. In other words, the measurement lacks sufficient ability to effectively distinguish the slight difference in frequency in BFD, resulting in inaccurate results. To overcome this limitation, this paper introduces an innovative solution by significantly augmenting the frequency resolution to enhance the distinctiveness of BFD, thereby the accuracy of identification can be improved, especially when handling a diverse range of RFID tags.   Read the paper: https://web.comp.polyu.edu.hk/csyanglei/data/files/bfdplus-secon23.pdf   IEEE SECON is a distinguished avenue that offers a collaborative space for scholars, industry experts, standards creators, and policymakers to discuss, exchange, and promote ideas and advancements in the realms of sensor, ad hoc, and mesh networks and systems.

Highlights of PolyU Info Day 2023

PolyU successfully hosted its much-anticipated Info Day 2023 on 21 October, attracting a diverse range of secondary school students, parents, and individuals seeking master's degree programmes. The event aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the academic programmes and featured a wide array of engaging activities that left attendees inspired and informed.   Our department offered a range of engaging activities, including an interactive booth where visitors had the opportunity to meet our programme leaders and teaching staff. It also showcased two Virtual Reality (VR) capstone projects created by our graduates. Visitors were able to immerse themselves in these VR demonstrations, experiencing the possible outcomes that can be achieved by studying our undergraduate programme.   To provide firsthand information about each programme's admission figures, requirements and distinctive features, COMP arranged individual sessions of Info Seminars for all BSc and MSc programmes, and nearly 400 participants attended our seminars.   This year, COMP organised in-depth guided tours for participants. Instead of rushing through the facilities, the tours began with a half-hour Game Design Workshop, which provided hands-on experience in designing games using Unity, a popular game development platform. Participants learned the fundamentals of game design while exploring their creativity. In addition, they had the opportunity to explore the department's state-of-the-art facilities, including the AI coffee system and a CAVE system showcasing an immersive project in collaboration with the Hong Kong Children’s Hospital. At the end of each tour, visitors enjoyed an exclusive chance to receive personalised consultation and gain guidance from our seasoned academic staff.