News

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.

Welcome On Board - Associate Professor and Presidential Young Scholar Dr CHENG Ran

We would like to extend a warm welcome to Dr CHENG Ran, joining DSAI as Associate Professor and Presidential Young Scholar on 16 December 2024. Dr Ran Cheng received his BSc degree from Northeastern University, China, in 2010, and his PhD degree from the University of Surrey, U.K., in 2016. Before joining The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, he was an Associate Professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology, China. His research focuses on advancing Computational Intelligence to tackle modeling and optimization challenges in complex systems. His primary research interests include evolutionary computation and representation learning, with an emphasis on developing efficient and scalable computational methods. Dr Cheng is the recipient of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award (2019), the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation Outstanding Paper Award (2018, 2020), the IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine Outstanding Paper Award (2021), and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Outstanding Early Career Award (2025).

LU Zhoudao wins Outstanding Student Award of Department 2024/25

LU Zhoudao, a student of the Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence programme, has been selected as the winner of the Outstanding Student Award of Department 2024/25. The Outstanding Student Award Scheme awards full-time final-year students who excel in both academic and non-academic pursuits during their studies annually. Apart from having outstanding academic merits, the awardees are well-rounded with aspects such as strong leadership abilities, good personal qualities and conduct, active involvement in extra-curricular activities and community services, and a global outlook. The Outstanding Student Award Presentation Ceremony 2024/25 is scheduled for April 2025.  

Prof. TAN Kay Chen recognised in the list of “Highly Cited Researchers 2024” by Clarivate Analytics

Prof. TAN Kay Chen, Interim Head and Chair Professor of DSAI, has been recognised in the list of “Highly Cited Researchers 2024” by Clarivate Analytics, under the category of Computer Science. This annual list recognises researchers for significant impact in their respective research fields. Each researcher selected has authored multiple highly-cited papers that have ranked in the top 1% by citations for their fields and publication year in the Web of Science over the past 11 years. This year, a total of 6,636 researchers from 59 countries and regions from a diverse range of fields have been named as Highly Cited Researchers.  

Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Makes Its Debut at PolyU Info Day 2024

The Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) proudly made its inaugural appearance at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Information Day 2024, held on October 12, 2024. The event introduced our programmes to secondary school students, parents, and individuals interested in pursuing further studies. Established in July 2024, DSAI will be a part of the newly formed Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (FCMS), which is set to officially launch on January 1, 2025. The Info Day kicked off with an FCMS opening ceremony officiated by Professor H.C. Man, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, and Professor Raymond Wai-yeung Wong, Dean of the Faculty of Science. They were joined by the heads and interim head of the three departments joining the faculty, including Professor Kay Chen Tan, Interim Head of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; Professor Defeng Sun, Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics; and Professor Qing Li, Head of the Department of Computing. A significant moment during the ceremony was the illumination of a lightbox displaying the faculty acronym, FCMS, symbolizing the bright future that awaits the new faculty. Our programmes attracted considerable interest, with around 280 visitors attending the undergraduate programme seminars focused on the Bachelor of Science (Hons) Scheme in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. In addition to the seminars, our consultation booth welcomed thousands of visitors. Prospective students and their families engaged with our department members, gaining insights into the curriculum, learning experience, and career pathways available in the rapidly evolving field of data science and artificial intelligence.

5 PolyU DSAI Scholars Ranked as the World's Top 2% Scientists

Five PolyU DSAI staff members have been ranked as the World’s Top 2% scientists 2024 by Stanford University. The report was prepared by a team of experts led by Prof. John Ioannidis, the eminent Professor at the Stanford University. Notably, 4 of the DSAI members were included based on both their career-long citation impact and single recent year citation impact. For more information, please visit: https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/7   Name (in alphabetical order of surname)  Subject Field   Prof. HUANG Jian  Statistics & Probability   Prof. KUMAR Ajay  Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing  Prof. TAN Kay Chen  Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing  Dr WU Xiao-Ming  Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing  Prof. ZHANG Chengqi  Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing