News

Wen Wei Po Coverage – Prof. YANG Xingyi Advances Efficient AI Training

Prof. YANG Xingyi, Assistant Professor of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) and Presidential Young Scholar, was featured in Wen Wei Po for his team’s work on efficient training methods for generative AI and world models. In the interview, Prof. YANG shared how his research aims to reduce reliance on computing resources and the environmental impact of AI training, contributing to more sustainable AI development. To read more, please visit the news articles at the following links (in Chinese only): https://polyu.me/3RSx4hB https://polyu.me/4icqUDw https://polyu.me/4gB3OVW

DSAI Students Win 1st Place in Startup Track at SEA Hacks AI Hackathon

The Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) is pleased to share that two DSAI students, Michael Arya WIJAYA and Joseph BERACHAH, together with their teammates Nikolas Jonathan WIJAYA from the Department of Applied Mathematics (AMA) and Michael LEE, a graduate of The University of Hong Kong, won 1st Place in the Startup Track at the SEA Hacks AI Hackathon, held on 4–5 July 2026. SEA Hacks is a two-day AI hackathon that brought together over 300 builders, including students, founders, and professionals, to develop real AI products addressing practical challenges across areas such as family businesses, finance, healthcare, and frontier startups. The event was organised in partnership with freeCodeCamp, Inception Studio — Stanford’s AI founder incubator — and the Y.Elites Association. Participants competed across three tracks: Startup, Industry, and Community. In the Startup Track, which focused on venture-scaled startup ideas and fast-moving product development, the team’s project, Weft, was selected as the winning project among 25 submitted projects. Weft is an open-source, privacy-first desktop application designed to help users better manage personal relationships across messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram. The application organises conversation history into useful relationship context, including important memories and follow-ups, and generates context-aware reply suggestions. A key feature of Weft is its strong emphasis on privacy and user control. Conversations and generated information are stored locally on the user’s device, allowing users to benefit from AI-powered assistance while maintaining ownership of their personal data. The team developed the project within just 48 hours, turning their idea into a functional product through close collaboration and rapid prototyping. This achievement demonstrates the students’ creativity, technical capability, and entrepreneurial mindset in applying AI to real-world problems. DSAI warmly congratulates the team on this outstanding achievement.

Welcome On Board – Two New Assistant Professors Join DSAI

The Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) is pleased to welcome two new Assistant Professors to our faculty. Prof. LI Xinfeng has joined DSAI as Assistant Professor, and Prof. SONG Zixing has joined as Assistant Professor under the Presidential Young Scholar Scheme, both effective 3 August 2026. Prof. LI Xinfeng Prof. LI’s research focuses on AI and cybersecurity, including the security, privacy, and safety of agentic AI systems and multimodal large language models. Before joining PolyU, he was a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University and received his Ph.D. and B.Eng. from Zhejiang University. His work has been published in leading security and AI/ML venues, and he has received honours including the ACM SIGSAC China Doctoral Dissertation Award. Prof. SONG Zixing Prof. SONG’s research focuses on data-centric graph machine learning, drug design, and AI4Science, with an emphasis on developing data-efficient and trustworthy models. Before joining PolyU, he was a Lecturer at the University of Bristol and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. He received his Ph.D. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and has received awards including the AAAI New Faculty Highlight and the INNS Doctoral Dissertation Award. We warmly welcome Prof. LI and Prof. SONG to DSAI and look forward to their valuable contributions to our department.

Prof. TAN Kay Chen Selected for 2027 IEEE CIS Enrique Ruspini Award for Meritorious Service

Professor TAN Kay Chen, Head of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has been selected to receive the 2027 IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Enrique Ruspini Award for Meritorious Service. Administered by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, the award recognises individuals who have made meritorious service contributions to the Society, formerly known as the IEEE Neural Networks Society. The award is named in honour of Enrique Ruspini, in recognition of his decades of dedicated service to the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, as well as his significant contributions to the field of computational intelligence technologies. Prof. TAN’s selection for this prestigious award is a strong testament to his sustained leadership, professional service, and significant contributions to the global computational intelligence community. Over the years, he has played an active role in advancing the development of computational intelligence through academic leadership, international collaboration, and dedicated service to the profession. The award includes a certificate and a cash prize of USD 2,000, and will be presented in 2027. The DSAI community extends its warmest congratulations to Prof. TAN on this well-deserved honour. For more details about the IEEE CIS Awards, please visit: https://cis.ieee.org/awards/ieeecis-awards

Welcome On Board – Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence Systems, Prof. CAO Liangliang

We are pleased to welcome Prof. CAO Liangliang as Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence Systems in the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI), effective 29 June 2026. Prof. CAO is a leading expert in artificial intelligence, with research interests in AI, Cloud AI, computer vision, speech and language technologies, and large language models. He has contributed to major AI systems including Apple Intelligence, Google Cloud Vision, Google Speech, Gemini and Project Astra. Before joining DSAI, Prof. CAO held senior research and leadership roles at IBM, Yahoo Labs, Google, Apple, Google DeepMind and OPPO. He also co-founded Switi Inc., which was acquired by Google in 2018. Prof. CAO was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 2025. His publications have received over 11,000 citations, and he has filed more than 15 patents. His accolades include the ACM SIGMM Rising Star Award, Google Cloud Feats of Engineering Award, and First Place in the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge. We warmly welcome Prof. CAO to DSAI and look forward to his contributions to teaching, research and innovation in artificial intelligence.

Prof. TAN Kay Chen Elected as 2027 President-Elect of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society

We are delighted to announce that Prof. TAN Kay Chen, Head and Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI), has been elected as President-Elect of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS). The election took place during the IEEE CIS Administrative Committee meeting held from 27 to 28 June 2026 in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Prof. TAN will serve as President-Elect in 2027 before taking up the presidency in accordance with the Society’s leadership succession process. IEEE CIS is a leading global professional society dedicated to advancing the theory, design, application, and development of biologically and linguistically motivated computational paradigms, including neural networks, evolutionary computation, fuzzy systems, and related intelligent technologies. The President-Elect is a key member of the Society’s Executive Committee and contributes to its strategic direction, governance continuity, and coordination across publications, conferences, technical activities, education, membership, and industry engagement. Prof. TAN has served IEEE CIS for more than 25 years across a broad range of leadership and professional roles. He served as Vice-President for Publications from 2021 to 2024 and has been elected to the IEEE CIS Administrative Committee for multiple terms. He was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation from 2015 to 2020 and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine from 2010 to 2013. He also served as General Co-Chair of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence 2016 and the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2019. Prof. TAN’s election reflects the international community’s strong confidence in his leadership and sustained commitment to the advancement of computational intelligence. It also underscores the DSAI Department’s growing international leadership and engagement in artificial intelligence and data science.

Online Consultation Session on the Restructure of BSc (Hons) Scheme in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence

The Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) will host an online consultation session for applicants to learn more about the restructuring of the UGC-funded BSc (Hons) Scheme in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (JS3223), effective from the 2026/27 intake cohort. Under the restructured scheme, the existing BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence will be retitled to BSc (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence with Financial Technology. A new specialism, BSc (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence, will also be introduced, subject to the programme satisfying validation requirements. The session will introduce the key changes, the updated programme options, and how the new structure provides students with clearer study directions in AI, data science, analytics and FinTech. Date: 9 July 2026, Thursday Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Target audience: Applicants interested in JS3223 / BSc (Hons) Scheme in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Registration: https://polyu.hk/GAVsu Applicants are welcome to join the session to better understand the changes and the new programme options. 數據科學及人工智能學系（DSAI）將舉辦網上諮詢會，讓申請人進一步了解由大學教育資助委員會資助的數據科學及人工智能（榮譽）理學士組合課程（JS3223）的重組安排。相關安排將由 2026/27 入學年度起生效。 在重組後的課程架構下，現有的金融科技及人工智能（榮譽）理學士將重新命名名為人工智能兼金融科技（榮譽）理學士。此外，課程亦將新增人工智能（榮譽）理學士專修範疇（須待課程通過審批程序）。 是次諮詢會將介紹課程的主要變更、更新後的課程選項，以及新架構如何為學生在人工智能、數據科學、數據分析及金融科技等領域提供更清晰的學習方向。 日期： 2026年7月9日（星期四） 時間： 下午2時至3時 對象： 有意報讀 JS3223／數據科學及人工智能（榮譽）理學士組合課程的申請人 報名： https://polyu.hk/GAVsu 歡迎申請人參加是次諮詢會，以進一步了解相關變更及新的課程選項。

(Register Now) Novel empirical likelihood method for the cumulative hazard ratio under stratified Cox models

You are cordially invited to attend the DSAI seminar by Prof. Yichuan Zhao on “Novel empirical likelihood method for the cumulative hazard ratio under stratified Cox models” with details as follows:   Date: 26 June 2026 Time: 11:00 - 12:00 Venue: AG434, PolyU If you are interested, please register at: https://polyu.hk/guaxQ (Registration Deadline: 24 June 2026) For enquiry, please contact us at dsai.enquiry@polyu.edu.hk. We look forward to seeing you at the seminar! Best regards, Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence  

(Register Now) Towards Graph-native LLMs and Agentic Systems

You are cordially invited to attend the DSAI seminar by Prof. Arijit Khan on “Towards Graph-native LLMs and Agentic Systems” with details as follows: Date: 18 June 2026 Time: 11:00 - 12:00 Venue: AG434, PolyU If you are interested, please register at: https://polyu.hk/SsQPp (Registration Deadline: 16 June 2026) For enquiry, please contact us at dsai.enquiry@polyu.edu.hk. We look forward to seeing you at the seminar! Best regards, Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence  

(Register Now) Can We Trust What We Hear? Advancements in Deepfake Audio Detection

You are cordially invited to attend the DSAI seminar by Dr Rohan Kumar Das on “Can We Trust What We Hear? Advancements in Deepfake Audio Detection” with details as follows: Date: 17 June 2026 Time: 11:00 - 12:00 Venue: AG434, PolyU If you are interested, please register at: https://polyu.hk/EIfoA (Registration Deadline: 15 June 2026) For enquiry, please contact us at dsai.enquiry@polyu.edu.hk. We look forward to seeing you at the seminar!   Best regards, Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence