News

Prof. CHENG Ran Receives the 2025 IEEE CIS Outstanding Early Career Award

We are delighted to announce that Prof. CHENG Ran, Associate Professor in the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, has been awarded the 2025 IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Outstanding Early Career Award. The award was presented at the 2025 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), recently held in Hangzhou, China. Established in 2010, the IEEE CIS Outstanding Early Career Award honors a single individual each year, under the age of 40, who has made outstanding contributions to the field of computational intelligence. Prof. CHENG is an active researcher in the field of Evolutionary Computation (EC), with a research focus on complex system optimization and the development of autonomous adaptation mechanisms in intelligent agents. His work aims to endow AI systems with the ability to continuously evolve and improve themselves from a mechanistic perspective. He is the founder of EvoX, a modern open-source platform that combines the fundamental principles of natural evolution with the power of GPU-accelerated computing, establishing a robust computational foundation for the field. To date, Prof. CHENG has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers, with more than 16,000 citations on Google Scholar. His research has garnered widespread international recognition, including the Best Paper Award at ACM GECCO 2024, the IEEE TEVC Outstanding Paper Award (2018, 2021), the IEEE CIM Outstanding Paper Award (2020), and the IEEE CIS Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award (2019). He has been named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2023, 2024) and is listed among the world’s top 2% scientists by Stanford University (2020–2024).  Prof. CHENG founded the IEEE CIS Shenzhen Chapter and served as its inaugural Chair. He currently serves as Associate Editor for several prestigious journals, such as ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization (TELO), IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (TEVC), and IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (TAI).  

Prof. LIN Wanyu receives the PolyU Young Innovative Researcher Award 2025

We are pleased to announce that Prof. LIN Wanyu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, has been honored with the PolyU Young Innovative Researcher Award 2025. The Award celebrates exceptional young academics who have demonstrated originality, contributed to technological advancement, and propelled transformational innovation into solutions addressing global challenges through their research. This year, the Award attracted an unprecedented 70 submissions from various schools and faculties, with Prof. LIN being one of the six selected awardees. Her winning research proposal, titled "An Interpretable Deep Learning-Based Computational Framework for Crystal Materials Design," embodies the innovative and impactful research that the award aims to recognize. Congratulations to Prof. LIN for her excellent research endeavours!  

Dot Dot News Coverage - New PolyU scheme aims to train talents in data analysis and AI

Prof. Jiang Binyan, Associate Head (Teaching) and Associate Professor of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, was interviewed by Dot Dot News on the new scheme, BSc (Hons) Scheme in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (Data Science and Analytics / Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence). The scheme is designed to provide students with solid training in mathematical, statistical and computer programming skills, with special emphasis on applications in investment and finance analytics or data science and analytics. To read more, please visit the new articles at the following links (in Chinese only):  https://polyu.me/4dvuO5Z https://polyu.me/4k9HOB3  

Wen Wei Po Coverage - PolyU’s DSAI programmes provide solid analytics knowledge

Prof. JIANG Binyan, Associate Head (Teaching) and Associate Professor of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, was interviewed by Wen Wei Po to introduce the characteristics of the BSc (Hons) Scheme in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI), which is designed to provide students with solid training in mathematical, statistical and computer programming skills, with special emphasis on applications in investment and finance analytics or data science and analytics. To read more, please visit the new articles at the following links (in Chinese only):  https://polyu.me/4djesxn https://polyu.me/4dkuYNH

(Register Now) Evolutionary Machine Learning: 50 Years of Progress on 05 June 2025

You are cordially invited to attend the DSAI seminar by Prof. Mengjie Zhang on “Evolutionary Machine Learning: 50 Years of Progress” with details as follows: Date: 5 June 2025 (Thursday) Time: 11:00 - 12:00pm Venue: HJ305, PolyU If you are interested, please register at: https://polyu.hk/sYlqu  (Registration Deadline: 30 May 2025) For enquiry, please contact us at dsai.enquiry@polyu.edu.hk. We look forward to seeing you at the seminar!

Welcome On Board - Professor of Practice, Professor CAI Wensheng

We are thrilled to announce that Professor of Practice CAI Wensheng has joined our Department, effective 2 May 2025. Professor CAI is a distinguished angel investor and the founder of Meitu, a leading technology company. Since entering the internet domain investment field in 2000, he has witnessed and documented the dynamic evolution of China's internet landscape. Please join us in welcoming Professor CAI to our community and supporting him in his endeavours to foster innovation and entrepreneurship at PolyU and DSAI. His extensive experience and visionary leadership will undoubtedly inspire and drive forward our initiatives in the digital and entrepreneurial landscape.

Welcome On Board - Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Professor Qiang Yang

We are delighted to announce that Professor Qiang Yang has joined the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) as Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence on a half-time basis, effective April 1, 2025. Professor Yang is renowned for his pioneering work in AI and brings a wealth of experience from his previous role as Chief AI Officer at WeBank. In addition to his appointment with DSAI, Professor Yang will serve as the Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO) of the University, a newly established position at PolyU. Furthermore, he will assume the role of Director of the PolyU Academy for Artificial Intelligence (DoPAAI), where he will drive collaborations with diverse stakeholders both within and outside the University. His leadership will be instrumental in revolutionizing the field of generative AI across a broad range of disciplines. Please join us in welcoming Professor Yang to DSAI and supporting him in his endeavours to advance AI at PolyU.

Ming Pao Newspaper Article - Prof. KUMAR Ajay on Iris Photos’ Privacy Risks

The iris is a unique feature of the human eye. While iris recognition has become a common biometric verification tool used in banks and immigration clearance, there is a growing trend using iris in photography services. In a recent article featured in Ming Pao Newspaper, Prof. KUMAR Ajay, Associate Head (Research) and Professor in the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI), expounded upon the trend of iris photography and explored the potential privacy and safety issues. To read more, please visit the new article at the following links (in Chinese only): https://polyu.me/3FunuL0 https://polyu.me/4hHfhQZ

DSAI Members Win First Prize in IEEE CIS FLAME Technical Challenge

We are pleased to announce that four members from the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) have triumphed in the prestigious IEEE CIS FLAME Technical Challenge 2024. The team, comprising Dr WU Xingyu, Mr ZHOU Yu, Mr CHEN Xianwei, and Dr WU Jibin, demonstrated exceptional innovation and expertise to secure the First Prize, earning a reward valued at US$15,000 (approx. HK$117,000). The team was supervised by Prof. TAN Kay Chen from the Machine Intelligence and Nature-Inspired Computing (MIND) Lab. The IEEE CIS FLAME Technical Challenge 2024 focuses on encouraging innovative combinations of large language models (LLMs) with computational intelligence techniques, aiming to explore novel applications across various domains. The competition invites teams from diverse organizations to showcase their ideas, emphasizing innovation as the primary criterion. Submissions were rigorously evaluated based on criteria such as computational efficiency, innovativeness, ethical considerations, and practical relevance. The team’s winning entry featured a novel approach to resource-efficient LLM development. Leveraging a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, they proposed an architecture-level merging technique to create cross-lingual LLMs. Unlike traditional methods requiring vast training data and computational power, their approach enabled the merging of existing model architectures to produce new LLMs optimized for multilingual tasks. The evaluation committee was particularly impressed by the team's innovative methodology, which tackled complex challenges such as search space explosion, layer alignment, and fairness among parent models. Their framework formalized model merging as a bi-level multi-objective optimization problem, combining parameter and architecture spaces to balance performance and resource constraints. By addressing the high computational barriers associated with LLM development, the team’s work empowers researchers with limited resources to innovate in the field. Their achievement underscores the potential of combining computational intelligence with LLMs, marking a significant milestone in LLM research and development. For more details about the IEEE CIS FLAME Technical Challenge 2024, please visit: https://cis.ieee.org/activities/educational-activites/flame-technical-challenge-2024    

Professor ZHANG Chengqi Appointed as Director of Shenzhen Research Institute in the PolyU Shenzhen Research Institute

We are delighted to announce that Professor ZHANG Chengqi, Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence in DSAI, has been appointed as Director of Shenzhen Research Institute in the PolyU Shenzhen Research Institute with effect from 1 January 2025. PolyU Shenzhen Research Institute was established in 2000 as PolyU’s extended campus in Shenzhen. It has been incorporated into the University strategy in all aspects of space deployment, management and research; and has become the focus of PolyU's development in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) region.