News

Dr Joanne Yip secures Champion at 4th Hong Kong Innovation Day

We’re very proud of Dr Joanne Yip, Associate Professor of ITC as her ITC research project, A Flexible Brace with Artificial Hinge, recently secured Champion at an event organised by the School of Nursing of PolyU, PolyU and Good Seed - the 4th Hong Kong Innovation Day (HKIA). A Flexible Brace with Artificial Hinge is good news for adolescent scoliosis sufferers. The project  merges clinical practice, material science and textile technology to create an innovative flexible brace specially designed for scoliosis. The artificial hinge used in this functional garment applies strategic corrective forces to the spine. This not only gives adequate support to the spine but also controls the progression of spinal deformity more effectively. The brace is comfortable to wear so patient compliance would increase and in the end, reduces the potential need for surgery. The aim of the HKIA is to stimulate innovative ideas and concepts that bring immediate benefits to patients, clinicians as well as the healthcare industry. Outstanding teams selected by the jury at the HKIA will take part in The Global Healthcare Innovation Academy which will be held in Toronto, Canada on June 22 and 23, 2020 to compete for the Innovation for Health Award of Excellence.  To see the article on Dr Yip, visit https://www.ghiaevent.com/biomedical-innovations.         

Prof. Kinor Jiang recipient of Leonardo da Vinci International Award

ITC academics are often recognized for the high calibre of their work and their creative talent. Recently, Prof. Kinor Jiang, Professor of ITC, was awarded the “Leonardo da Vinci” International Award for Design (2nd prize in the Fashion & Jewellery Design Category) at the 12th Florence Biennale which took place from 18 to 27 October 2019. The winning design is called “Watch” which is a dialogue between tangible and intangible elements, highlighted with black and white in abstract lattices of dots and shapes . The focus is on the abstract texture rather than concreteness when one approaches the design for a closer view. In doing so, the viewer will gain an awareness of lapses in time and changes in space. The “Leonardo da Vinci” International Award for Design is conferred to the best exhibiting designers for their works on show in each category including: Architecture & Town Design, Industrial & Product Design, Interior Design, Fashion & Jewellery Design, Communication & Graphic Design, Technology & Game Design.  Florence Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition in Florence, Italy, and regarded as an outstanding showcase of international contemporary art production.  Since its establishment, the Florence Biennale has been a free, independent, and innovative ‘platform’ for contemporary art. Thousands of artists from over a hundred countries have exhibited their works at Florence Biennale, which have defined the main art forms and disciplines.

Prof. Kinor Jiang and Ms Nico Liu funded to enhance student learning experiences

Good news for fashion and textile design students who want the opportunity to work with enterprises and design products. Prof. Kinor Jiang, Professor of ITC, recently obtained a Teaching Development Grant of HK$200,000 for 2019-22. The project is called “Building an interactive platform for practical design project between students and industries” which intends to build a sustainable multidimensional online platform so that both students and enterprises can collaborate on practical projects in fashion and textile design. Participating students can look forward to improving their learning capabilities and providing resources to the global market by working with different corporates to design products during their study period. This project can also enhance their communication and collaboration skills with the industries,  and the knowledge that the students gain will truly align with the needs of the enterprises and the market. Participating students will obtain the skills to learn in new environments and adapt to them, which means that they will emerge as more independent, effective and adaptive learners. Ms Nico Liu, Instructor of ITC, received internal funding of HK$100,000 for 2018-19 from the Strategic Plan Initiatives of PolyU for a project titled “Make the Best Use of the Contact Hours by Implementing Visual Learning Scenarios and Peer Learning Groups” which aims to enhance student learning experiences through the use of interactive pedagogies.  The aim of the project is to enhance student learning experiences, promote independent and collaborative learning, make best use of contact hours, as well as provide a supportive environment for students to monitor and reflect on their learning based on the implementation of interactive pedagogies by using AR and peer learning as teaching tools. Additional digital learning resources are offered so that students can understand the different events before traditional face to face lessons take place. The use of AR and peer learning tools also facilitates the interest of students to learn about the subject that is taught, as the teaching materials are presented in a more appealing way in comparison to traditional unidirectional methods.

The Vincent & Lily Woo Trust pledged scholarship support

The Vincent & Lily Woo Trust, an ardent supporter of PolyU and ITC, has pledged their support for a newly proposed programme at ITC - the Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Digital Fashion. The proposed BSc (Hons) in Digital Fashion is designed to fit the developmental needs of the fashion industry in the digital era. This 2-year full-time progamme is characterized by the 3is: iFashion, iMedia and iConnect, and integrated into two capstone projects. The aim is to provide students with advanced digital skills for fashion creation (iFashion) and media communication (iMedia) as well as enable them to merge fashion and textile processes with emerging technologies for product and business innovation (iConnect). The capstone projects also enable students to apply their learned skills to solve real business problems in the fashion industry. Students with an Associate Degree or Higher Diploma in fashion, business, media communication, engineering or information technology related fields of study are encouraged to enroll in this new programme. Moreover, students with outstanding academic performance will be awarded the Vincent & Lily Woo Entrance Scholarship sponsored by The Vincent & Lily Woo Trust. About The Vincent & Lily Woo Trust Mr Vincent V.C. Woo (1910 – 1981), a successful entrepreneur and highly respected philanthropist, was the founder of Central Textiles (HK) Limited. He served twice as Chairman of the Hong Kong Cotton Spinners Association. The Woo family founded The Vincent & Lily Woo Trust. Over the years, the Trust has made generous donations to PolyU and ITC for the development of the local fashion and textile industries and education. In the period of 2009/10 and 2011/12, nine undergraduate students and four research students have been awarded sponsorships to support their overseas exchange experience and research postgraduate studies respectively. In 2009, PolyU named a conference room as “Mr and Mrs Vincent V.C Woo Conference Room” as an appreciation of generous donation. In 2014, the “Vincent and Lily Woo Endowed Professorship in Textiles Technology” was established, with Prof. Xiao-ming Tao, Chair Professor of Textile Technology of ITC as the Endowed Professor.

Prof. Jason Choi produces top cited papers in a premier journal

We are proud to announce that Prof. Jason Choi has been recognized by Wiley-Blackwell Publishers for two top cited papers in the Production and Operations Management journal, which is a “UTD-listed FT50” premier business journal of the Production and Operations Management Society in the United States. Prof. Choi has received a certificate of achievement from Wiley-Blackwell in recognition of his work. Wiley-Blackwell stated that “amongst articles published between January 2018 and December 2019, these two articles received some of the highest count of citations”, which means that the “articles generated immediate impact and helped to raise the visibility of Production and Operations Management”. The first paper focuses on luxury fashion business operations with discussions on optimal advertising decisions. The Nobel prize winning mean-variance theory in finance is applied to generate managerial insights, which include scenarios and formats of optimal budget allocation plans for advertisements of luxury fashion that would take social influences between different consumer groups into account. One interesting implication is that luxury fashion brands should focus on a single consumer group (e.g., the fashion leader) if their goal is to maximize profits. Moreover, luxury fashion companies should not penalize their marketing managers if they are underspending their allocated budget because “over-advertising” can have negative effects in luxury fashion. The second paper discusses how big data can be used in business operations by examining different techniques and strategies for big data analytics. Several big data architectures have been developed for companies to consider when they make plans to implement big data analytics.  Real world cases on big data applications, including those from fashion brands such as LV and Nike, are reported. The findings provide important guidance to companies, including fashion enterprises, on the proper use of big data analytics for their operations analyses. These two top cited research papers (corresponding author*) are: Chiu, C.H., T.M. Choi*, X. Dai, B. Shen, J.H. Zheng. Optimal Advertising Budget Allocation in Luxury Fashion Markets with Social Influences: A Mean-Variance Analysis. Production and Operations Management, 27 (8), 1611-1629, 2018. Choi, T.M.*, S.W. Wallace, Y. Wang. Big Data Analytics in Operations Management. Production and Operations Management, 27 (10), 1868-1883, 2018.

Yishu Yan puts Hong Kong in spotlight at 2019 Arts of Fashion Foundation Competition

ITC PhD student Yishu Yan recently had the exciting opportunity to attend the 18th Arts of Fashion Foundation Competition which was held at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on 16 December 2019.  This is one of the most fierce design competitions in the world for students. Among the hundreds of applications from 85 schools and universities in 28 countries and regions, Yishu represented Hong Kong as one of the 50 shortlisted finalists who flaunted their skills on the runway, and were judged by some very iconic international fashion designers including Yiqing Yin and Noureddine Amir from the Chambre Syndicale of Haute Couture of Paris, and Jasper Chadprajong-Smith of the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as emerging fashion designers, Alicia Declerck and Brandon Wen. Mentored by Prof Kinor Jiang and Dr Jinyun Zhou, Yishu transformed her PhD research work into a collection called ‘The Opposites’ to complement this year’s theme - ‘Verticality’.  Inspired by the lyrics of a song in the Audio Architecture exhibition which uses pairs of contradictory words to explore the relationship between sound and architecture, Yishu created a women’s knitwear collection that can be worn in many different ways.  She used flexible knitted fabric to create fashion elements that complement but also contradict each other and successfully highlighted the essence of transitional garments.    About the Arts of Fashion Foundation Competition The Arts of Fashion Foundation Competition aims to promote and reward creativity and inventiveness; discover emerging talent and facilitate careers; establish enriching contacts and exchanges between different countries, schools and universities; and foster new relationships between those from different industries and fields.

Prof. John Xin receives China National Science and Technology Progress Award

Prof. John Xin, Chair Professor of ITC, and his research team were the Second Prize recipients of the China National Science and Technology Progress Award 2019 for their work entitled “Key Technologies and Industrialization of Digital Printed Colours on Textiles” (紡織面料顏色數字化關鍵技術及產業化). The work is a collaborative effort between PolyU, Luthai Textile Co., Ltd., Donghua University and Zhejiang University. Prof. Xin is the primary contributor among the collaborators of the awarded work. One of the fundamental technologies that led to this recognition is an imaging color measurement (ICM) system developed by Prof. Xin and his team at ITC and supported by the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textile and Apparel (HKRITA). The award demonstrates the significance of the ICM system, which is based on software and hardware that measure colour with disruptive digital imaging technology, to the fashion and textile industries, as well as many other different industries in which accurate colour measurements and colour quality control are important. Using the right colours is always a challenging task for textile and garment manufacturers. The ICM system developed by Prof Xin and his team has ultra-high precision and capable of accurately measuring the color of each pixel on textile fabric, which can be yarn dyed fabric, printed fabric, or even a piece of lace with multiple colours and textures. The complexity of these different colours cannot be measured with conventional colour measurement instruments. The digital ICM system has the ability to measure different complex colours with just one click of a mouse without the need for contact with the measured object. This is indeed a significant advancement in colour measurement and colour quality control. The highly accurate ICM system effectively eliminates conflict between textile and garment producers and buyers in terms of colour consistency, reduces the product development lead time, and lowers cost as there are fewer colour samples needed and sample delivery from producers to buyers can be eliminated. The ICM system is also a very useful tool for designing, developing and visualizing coloured products,  all of which can provide a wide range of benefits not only to the textile and garment industries, but also to many other industries that offer coloured products.

UGC video features Prof. Calvin Wong

"WiseEye: An AI based Textile Material Inspection System” is an award winning research project led by Prof. Calvin Wong, Cheng Yik Hung Professor in Fashion and Professor of ITC. Over the past few years, Prof. Wonghas receivedfour invention awards and a patentthrough WiseEye . The project is funded by the General Research Fund (GRF) and National Nature Science Foundation of China and the workhas been widely disseminated inworld-leading publications in the field of artificial intelligence. The highly acclaimed project came to the attention of the University Grants Committee (UGC) of Hong Kong who interviewed Prof. Wong on the functions and industrial impact of WiseEye in a video titled ‘Video on Impactful Research’. The video was uploaded onto the UGC official website on 24 January 2020. Video on Impactful Researchfeatures twelve inspirational researchers in various areas and disciplines of different universities in Hong Kong.  Mr Carlson Tong, Chairman of the UGC, commended the great effort put forth by stellar researchers in Hong Kong: “We have come a long way in building research excellence in the higher education sector with more and more of our researchers receiving prestigious innovation awards, registering international patents and producing widely recognized and quality publications”. With respect to research development in Hong Kong in the long term, Mr Tong said: “The government has committed to increasing resources, and cross-boundary research funding opportunities are being offered by Mainland China. Therefore, we should capitalize on these new resources and advance knowledge in partnership with other sectors beyond the academia. I am confident that our researchers will make even more significant contributions in the long-term and for the sustainable development of Hong Kong”.

Announcement of Future Retail Challenge 2020 team members

ITC students will be participating in the prestigious Future Retail Challenge student competition which will be held in October 2020 in Rome, Italy. The team will receive sponsorship and professional advice from Li & Fung. The competition has become a popular component of the World Retail Congress, which seeks to promote future talents in the retail industry across the world and help talented students by allowing them to come together to facilitate new ways of thinking and generate new ideas. This year's challenge is called “Project Retail Phoenix: Making a Retailer Relevant Again” which involves the development of a survival plan and strategies for a local store in distress or facing serious competition. The panel of judges of the second audition included a guest judge - Mr Richard Lee, Senior Vice-President of Li & Fung, and ITC academic supervisors - Dr Eunsoo Baek, Dr Sun Young Choi and Dr Chris Lo. A total of 11 students participated in the first audition, and six were shortlisted for the second audition. Among them, the panel selected four students to represent PolyU as the competing team in the Future Retail Challenge. The team consists of Rachel Leung, Jenny Ching-yee Choi, Jessica Wan-hei Tsang and Sammi Wong.  Congratulations and good luck!

Sheng Qiu collects Gold Award at 3rd Keqiao-China International Formal Attire Design Competition

Sheng Qiu (MA in Fashion and Textile Design, 2018), who is studying under the supervision of Prof. Kinor Jiang and also a research assistant, won Gold Award in the Student Group of Creative Fashion at the 3rd Keqiao-China International Formal Attire Design Competition on 21 December 2019 which was held at the Zhejiang University of Technology. The fashion show showcased more than 300 entries from universities, independent designers and companies or studios in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the UK, France, South Korea, etc. Sheng Qiu’s collection transcends traditional formal attire. In her collection, the garments are designed to be worn in a variety of ways. The prints are used effectively. Vivid colours and the multiple uses of the garments impart uniqueness to her collection. Sheng Qiu is currently a textile designer, and particularly skilled in textile pattern design and the application of colour. She designs extraordinary textiles for many purposes: fashion, interiors, and life itself. Her aim is to transfer the subtle and unexpected beauties of life, seeking from users their own forms of interpretation and engagement.