News

Three DSAI Staff Members Receive Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement 2026

Three staff members from the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) have received the Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement 2026 presented by the Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (FCMS). The DSAI awardees are: Early Career Teacher - Dr LIAO Weihang Ryo, Teaching Fellow Research Student Supervision - Prof. KUMAR Ajay, Professor Knowledge Transfer: Society - Prof. WU Jibin, Assistant Professor Selected by a Faculty Assessment Panel from a strong pool of departmental nominees, the awardees were recognised for their achievements in teaching, research student supervision, and knowledge transfer for societal benefit. Their accomplishments reflect DSAI’s commitment to educational excellence, talent development, and societal impact. The DSAI community extends its warmest congratulations to Dr LIAO, Prof. KUMAR, and Prof. WU on their achievements and wishes them continued success.

Prof. KUMAR Ajay Receives 2026 IEEE Biometrics Council Leadership Award

Prof. KUMAR Ajay, Associate Head (Research) of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, has received the 2026 IEEE Biometrics Council Leadership Award. The award was presented at the IEEE/IAPR International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB 2026) in Rome, Italy, on 3 September 2026. One of the IEEE Biometrics Council’s most prestigious honours, the award recognises Prof. KUMAR’s exceptional and sustained leadership in contactless hand-based biometrics, as well as his outstanding professional service to the IEEE Biometrics Council. For more than two decades, Prof. KUMAR has made pioneering contributions to contactless palmprint, fingerprint, finger-knuckle and palm-vein recognition. His research has advanced biometric science and its real-world applications, while the benchmark datasets released by his team have supported researchers worldwide. He has also contributed significantly to the development of the global biometrics community, including serving as President of the IEEE Biometrics Council from 2021 to 2022. At the award ceremony, Prof. KUMAR delivered a vision talk titled “Biometrics at a Crossroads: From Impact to Responsibilities”, outlining priorities for trustworthy and privacy-preserving biometrics, responsible AI, multimodal identity systems and anti-deepfake technologies. “This award belongs not only to me but to every student and collaborator at PolyU who contributed to this body of work. It is a privilege to have spent over two decades working on a technology that has genuinely changed how people access their world,” said Prof. KUMAR. The award comprises a commemorative plaque and a US$2,000 honorarium. The DSAI community extends its warmest congratulations to Prof. KUMAR on this distinguished achievement.

DSAI Welcomes New Students at 2026 Orientation Sessions

The Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) welcomed its new undergraduate and postgraduate students at three orientation sessions held on 27 August, 3 September, and 4 September 2026. At the orientation for the BSc (Hons) Scheme in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Prof. CHEN Changwen, Interim Dean of the Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, delivered welcoming remarks, followed by an introduction to DSAI by Prof. TAN Kay Chen, Head of DSAI. Students received briefings on studying at PolyU and on the General University Requirements, and met their Programme Leaders and Academic Advisors. The MSc in Data Science and Analytics (MScDSA) and MSc in Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Computing (MScAIBD) orientations featured welcoming addresses by Prof. JIANG Binyan, Associate Head (Teaching), and Prof. TAN Kay Chen, Head of DSAI, respectively. Programme briefings and practical advice on studying and living in Hong Kong helped students prepare for their new academic journey. DSAI warmly welcomes all new students and wishes them a rewarding year ahead.

DSAI Student Receives EDPS Innovative Scholarship 2025–26

The Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) is pleased to share that TO Po Chun, a student of the BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence, has been awarded the EDPS Innovative Scholarship 2025–26 under the AI & Machine Learning category. Organised by EDPS Systems Limited, the scholarship recognises outstanding final-year university students in Hong Kong in the fields of Data Science, Computer Science, and Information Technology. At the 2025–26 Presentation Ceremony held in August, 20 high-achieving students were honoured, each receiving an award valued at HK$20,000. Po Chun was recognized for his project titled "A Predictive AIoT Framework for Clinical Ward Automation using Random Forest Regressors and MQTT." The project explores how artificial intelligence and smart devices can automate everyday tasks in hospital wards—such as adjusting blinds, windows, and ventilation, as well as triggering safety alerts. By reducing manual workloads for healthcare staff, the framework aims to enhance patient comfort, ward safety, and energy efficiency. This achievement reflects Po Chun’s creativity and strong ability to apply AI technologies to solve practical challenges in healthcare. DSAI warmly congratulates Po Chun on this achievement.

(Register Now) DSAI Distinguished Seminar Series - MOSAiC: Multi-site One-Shot Aggregation of Compressed Risk Functions

You are cordially invited to attend the DSAI distinguished seminar by Prof. Chen Yong on “MOSAiC: Multi-site One-Shot Aggregation of Compressed Risk Functions” with details as follows:   Date: 28 Aug 2026 Time: 11:00 - 12:00 Venue: AG206, PolyU   If you are interested, please register at: https://polyu.hk/igEMx (Registration Deadline: 27 Aug 2026) 

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.