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PolyU Scientist Dr Ren Jingzheng Wins the 2022 APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education

Dr Ren Jingzheng, Associate Professor of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), has been selected as the sole winner of the 2022 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE Prize), in recognition of his scientific contribution and commitment to excellence in scientific research and the spirit of cooperation with scientists from other APEC member economies under the 2022 ASPIRE Prize theme of “Innovation to achieve economic, environmental, and social goals”. PolyU is the only higher education institution in Hong Kong to have had two young scientists honoured with this prestigious award in a single decade. Dr Ren stood out among the 13 remarkable nominees this year and was well recognised by the APEC Policy Partnership on Science, Technology, and Innovation (PPSTI) representatives. The award ceremony was held on 21 August in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Dr Ren mainly focuses on waste-to-energy, the circular economy, industrial ecology, and process systems engineering. As the originator of the “sustainability-oriented decision-making and optimisation” approach that simultaneously considers economic, environmental and social goals, multiple research outcomes from him and his team have attracted the attention and interest of academia and industry and have been applied in various fields, such as sustainable design and optimisation of complex industrial systems, energy conservation and emissions mitigation of the wastewater treatment processes, valorisation of medical waste and sewage sludge, and converting agricultural waste into energy or value-added products. “It is my great honour to win this prize. I appreciate the support of my colleagues, my department and PolyU. This good news has heartened me, and I know I should insist on continuing what I am working on using systems thinking to solve energy and environmental problems in industrial systems and using innovative ways to achieve economic, environmental and social sustainability simultaneously.” Dr Ren said. Besides the broad collaboration with scientists from other APEC member economies, he also plans to promote a new concept proposed by him, “scientific decision-making for the colocalisation of the complex industrial system”, and the waste-to-energy processes to energy-intensive industries and the waste recycling industry of APEC member economies for a more sustainable future, as well as helping to achieve a successful transition to the Bio-Circular-Green economy. The ASPIRE Prize is an annual award which recognises young scientists who are under the age of 40 and have demonstrated a commitment to both excellence in scientific research, as evidenced by scholarly publications, and cooperation with scientists from other APEC member economies, including inclusive and interdisciplinary collaboration.

RAIDS Student Team won Gold Award in The 8th China International College Students’ ”Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. RAIDS學生團隊獲得第八屆中國國際大學生“互聯網+”創新創業大賽

China International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition has been held for seven seasons since 2015.  Participation was by 25.33 million college students in 6.03 million teams from 121 countries and regions in five continents, and the competition has become the largest global event for innovation and entrepreneurship.  It invites excellent young people engaged in innovation and entrepreneurship all over the world to participate in this event where entrants can work to realize the dream of innovation and entrepreneurship, and to create a better future for the world. The final round competition of the 8th China International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition was held on on November 26, 2022 at Chongqing University. The competition was officially launched in April this year. More than 14.5 million participants from 111 different countries registered, and up to 3.4 million projects were received then. It really served as an international communication platform to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship worldwide. In Hong Kong, the number of participants who attended this competition this year reached 798, together with 266 projects. Since being successfully held in 2015, the award ceremony has became a fantastic event for the information and communication industry in Hong Kong. At this year’s ceremony, Dr. Kai Xu, Vice Minister of Education and Technology Department of the Liaison Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, sincerely congratulated the awardees for their outstanding achievements and contributions to innovation and technology development for Hong Kong.  Professor Dong Sun, JP, Secretary for Innovation, Technology, and Industry, delivered a speech at the event, presented trophies to the grand prize winners under three categories, and celebrated their outstanding performance. After the final round of competition in the Hong Kong region held in Hong Kong Science Park on November 11, the RAIDS student team from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Shufei Li/Chin-Lok Tsang/Junming Fan/Yat-Ming Pang/ Hin-Chi Kwok/ Chengxi Li/ Mengyang Ren) won one of the only 4 Gold Awards among 266 participated teams. They were chosen as representative teams from the Hong Kong region to present their work on the “Mutual Cognitive Human-Robot Collaboration System”and exchange ideas with other worldwide winners. The student team mentor, Ir Dr Pai Zheng believes that this work is in line with the Hong Kong Government's Re-industrialization policy and can effectively improve industrial productivity towards a human-centric smart manufacturing paradigm, by leveraging the cutting-edge robotics, digital and AI technologies. In detail, the work advances the intelligence of existing industrial collaborative robots to seamlessly work with human operators in a symbiotic manner, which effectively alleviates the high cost of land and labor in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, it provides a feasible solution for Hong Kong, which once again promotes the ambitious goal of "Made in Hong Kong" and internationalization. The team captain Shufei Li said he could not hide his excitement when he learned they won the gold award, which is an irreplaceable encouragement for their efforts. Chin-Lok Tsang, a vital team member, expressed his feeling and hope in the winner's speech, which encouraged young people in Hong Kong to show their enthusiasm for cutting-edge technologies and contribute their domain knowledge for the better development of Hong Kong.

Presentation of Outstanding Alumni Awards of PolyU ISE Department and FENG

Outstanding Alumni Award Presentation Ceremony was successfully held at the PolyU 28th Congregation on 9 Nov 2022 in Jockey Club Auditorium. Mr Dave Chong Chiu-ping, awardee of the Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Faculty of Engineering (FENG), graduated from Higher Diploma in Production and Industrial Engineering and Associateship in Production and Industrial Engineering from the Hong Kong Polytechnic, the University’s predecessor, in 1979 and 1982 respectively. Prof. Boby Kong Ling-bao, graduate of Doctor of Philosophy in 2010, obtaining the Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE). Unfortunately, he was not able to join the Ceremony. Ms Vincy Wong Wing-sze, graduate of BSc (Hons) in Enterprise Engineering and E-Business in 2008, obtained the Outstanding Young Alumni Award of PolyU ISE Department and FENG. Details about recipients of Outstanding Alumni Awards of PolyU FENG are available here. More details about ISE Outstanding Alumni Awardees of the past years can be found here. Prof. HC Man, Dean of Faculty of Engineering (left), Mr Dave Chong Chiu-ping (middle) and Prof. KC Chan, Head of Department (right)

Ranked 5th among World Universities in Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

It's fantastic to share the good news that PolyU ranked 5th in Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering by the URAP Field Ranking 2021/22. (Source: https://urapcenter.org/Rankings/2021-2022/2022-Industrial%20%26%20Manufacturing%20Engineering)

ISE Alumni Homecoming Day successfully held for alumni to mingle

ISE Alumni Homecoming Day was successfully held on 12 Nov at the PolyU Alumni Atrium to celebrate PolyU’s 85th Anniversary. The event was co-organized by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and MILES Alumni Association (MILESAA). It provided an opportunity for our gradates and students to get together to network and to develop partnership. They were also invited to visit some of the laboratories to know more about our state-of-art facilities. Precision Robotics Lab, Research Centre for Deep Space Exploration State Key Laboratory of Ultra-precision Machining Technology Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory Aviation Operations and Control Laboratory Ng Tat Lun Digital Factory Photos of the events can be found here.

PolyU and Institute of Engineering and Technology sign MoU to enhance experience sharing with mentors

Institute of Engineering and Technology and Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering of PolyU signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance the exposure of our ISE students through experience sharing and interaction with experienced mentors from industries so as to realize the importance of professional development. This year, we have almost 50 mentees registered for the IET-PolyU Mentorship Programme and invited 9 mentors who have over 10 years of working experience from a wide range of discipline to provide mentoring service. During the mentorship kick-off ceremony, Ms Cadence Law, who is alumni of BEng (Hons) of Product Engineering with Marketing and committee member of IET Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering Section (MIES), provided an inspiring talk for the mentees and shared her professional career path development. Mentors interacted with mentees to provide constructive advice during the networking session.

RAIDS students won the Student Innovation Gold Award in the “Hong Kong ICT Awards 2022”

Mr. Tsang Chin-Lok, Mr. Li Chengxi, and Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi from the Research Group of AI for Industrial Digital Servitization (RAIDS) received the Gold Award in the “Tertiary or Above” stream of the “Hong Kong ICT Awards 2022”. They also stood among the 300+ teams and received the overall championship – Grand Award in Student Innovation Stream. The Hong Kong ICT Awards is a competition steered by the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, and organized by Hong Kong ICT industry associations and professional bodies. It aims at recognizing and promoting outstanding information and communications technology (ICT) inventions and applications, thereby encouraging innovation and excellence among Hong Kong's ICT talent and enterprises in their constant pursuit of creative and better solutions to meet business and social needs. The team won the award with the project entitled “Mutual Cognitive Human-Robot Collaborative Manufacturing System”, which was supervised by Ir Dr Zheng Pai. The system aims to enhance the intelligence of industrial cobots and industrial personnel with the use of the cognitive AI model and AR platform, in a human-robot collaborative manner towards futuristic human-centric smart manufacturing. Mr. Tsang Chin-Lok is currently an MPhil student from the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering (AAE), and was formerly an Interdepartmental FYP student under the ISE Department. Mr. Li Chengxi is a Ph.D. student in the ISE department. His Ph.D. topic is related to robot learning, computer vision, augmented reality, and digital twins for futuristic human-robot collaborative manufacturing. Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi is currently a third-year student of the BSc (Hons) in Enterprise Engineering with Management and Undergraduate Research and Innovation Scheme (URIS) holder in the ISE department. Congratulations again to the winners, and we hope they have a great success on the innovation and entrepreneurship road.

Students from EEM and LEM programmes received 2nd Place Winner in Undergraduate Research Competition and Simulation Competition of 5th European Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management

Students from EEM and LEM programmes participated and received 2nd Place Winner in Undergraduate Research Competition and Simulation Competition of 5th European Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management to share their impressive research contributions. Supervised by Dr. Carman Lee, Mr Cheung Ho Hin illustrated a collision avoidance and trajectory tracking for multiple autonomous mobile robots in robot operating system and Miss Sheren Aurelia Dyka Chandra presented an agility in resilient supply chain risk management design to cope with supply shortage under covid-19 pandemic: simulation-based supplier strategy.

ISE students Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi and Mr. Li Chengxi from RAIDS Team have won the 2022 Champion Award (Bachelor/Sub-degree Level) of HKIE CA Paper Award Competition

Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi, Mr. Li Chengxi and Dr. Pai Zheng from the Research Group of AI for Industrial Digital Servitization (RAIDS) have won the 2022 Champion Award (Bachelor/Sub-degree Level) of the Paper Competition, organized by the Control Automation & Instrumentation Division of The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE). Their winning paper is entitled “A Meta-Reinforcement Learning Based Control Approach for Assisting Human-Robot Collaboration in Personalized Production”, which aims to enable collaborative robots (cobots) to acquire basic skills and perform tasks based on personalised production requirements. The proposed method can improve robotic learning efficiency and quickly adapt to new tasks for human operators. Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi is currently a second year student of the BSc (Hons) in Enterprise Engineering with Management and Undergraduate Research and Innovation Scheme (URIS) holder in the ISE department under Dr. Pai Zheng’s supervision. Mr. Li Chengxi is PhD students in the ISE department, under Dr. Pai Zheng’s supervision. His PhD topics are related to the reinforcement learning, augmented reality and robot learning for smart manufacturing. Dr. Pai Zheng is currently the Assistant Professor, Wong Tit Shing Endowed Young Scholar in Smart Robotics, and Lab-in-Charge of Digitalized Service Laboratory (DSL), in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HKSAR. His research interest mainly lies in smart product-service systems, human-robot collaboration, and smart manufacturing systems. Congratulations again to the winners, and we hope they have a great success on the study and research trip.

85A Alumni Tourcation - Traversing the New Arenas of Industrial and Systems Engineering

On 23 July 2022, around 50 alumni from various disciplines and generations gathered at PolyU to join the “85A Alumni Tourcation”, an event jointly organised by the Alumni Affairs Office (AAO) and PolyU MILES Alumni Association (MILESAA), and supported by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) and the Federation of PolyU Alumni Associations (FHKPUAA). Mr. Eddy Wu, President of MILESAA, and Ms. Wanze Li, Section Head (Alumni Affairs and Associations) of AAO, gave a warm welcome to the participants at the Alumni Atrium. The group first set off for the new landmark of PolyU – the enhanced main entrance, where they took good snapshots, preserving this homecoming moment. Next, they were divided into two teams for the interactive guided laboratory visit, which consisted of six laboratories in total: the State Key Laboratory of Ultra-precision Machining Technology, Aviation Operations and Control Laboratory, Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory, Ng Tat Lun Digital Factory, Integrated Product Design Laboratory, and the PolyU-Microsoft Enterprise Systems Centre. Apart from introducing the state-of-the-art facilities and equipment in detail, the staff and researchers from ISE also gave excellent demonstrations, amazing the participants who had been eager to know more about the daily applications of the systems. After the lab visit, the group continued to reminisce about their campus life by touring round Stephen Cheong Kam Chuen Memorial Plaza, the Jockey Club Innovation Tower, the iconic footbridge in the northeast boundary of PolyU, and finally the sky garden located on the rooftop of Block Z.