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PolyU receives two Ministry of Education Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards

Two research projects led by scholars from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) have received the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) 2022 from the Ministry of Education (MOE) with a First-Class and Second-Class Award in Natural Science respectively. A First-Class Award in Natural Science was presented to the research project “Mathematical theory of compressible Navier-Stokes equations and related models” led by Prof. Tong YANG, Chair Professor of Mathematical Science in the Department of Applied Mathematics; and a Second-Class Award in Natural Science was granted to the project “Atmospheric Chemistry of Reactive Nitrogen Oxides and its Impacts on Regional Atmospheric Environment” led by Prof. Tao WANG, Chair Professor of Atmospheric Environment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Prof. Christopher CHAO, PolyU Vice President (Research and Innovation) said, “We are honoured to receive these prestigious accolades from the MOE, which are testament to the dedication and hard work of our scholars. Their outstanding achievements have had very considerable impacts and serve to showcase PolyU excellence in scientific research and academia. We express our appreciation to our colleagues for their relentless pursuit of knowledge and passion for discovery, which truly exemplifies the spirit of higher education. As valued members of the PolyU community, they will continue to inspire future generations, leveraging the University’s strengths in education, research and entrepreneurship to contribute to the Nation.” Prof. Tong Yang’s project is conducted in collaboration with Prof. Changjiang ZHU and Prof. Huanyao WEN at the South China University of Technology. The mathematics model, known as the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, is fundamental to describing the motion of compressible fluids, and research into its mathematical theory has long been recognised as significant in the global mathematics community. This project is in Prof. Yang’s core research area. Prof. Yang has made significant contributions to scientific research on Conservation laws, the Boltzmann equation and Boundary layer theories. Prof. Tao Wang’s project is conducted in collaboration with scholars from Shandong University, Nanjing University and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences. The research started 20 years ago with systemic study of nitrogen oxides in Hong Kong and other places in China. The project is in Prof. Wang’s core research area. By employing field observations, laboratory experiments and computer simulations, Prof. Wang’s team discovered important chemical processes of Nitrogen oxides and their roles in photochemical and haze pollution. The findings have enhanced knowledge of atmospheric chemistry and improved an extensively used air quality model for global air quality forecasting and research. The Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) were set up by the MOE to recognise outstanding research projects at tertiary institutions nationwide. The award is presented to individuals or units who have made remarkable contributions in science and technology advancement, translational research and talent cultivation.

Media Interview: Biomimicking Photocrosslinkable Nanocomposite Bone Grafts mirror the structure of natural bone

Dr Xin ZHAO, Limin Endowed Young Scholar in Biomedical Engineering and Associate Professor of Department of Biomedical Engineering of PolyU, introduces her research project that won the 2023 TechConnect Global Innovation Award in an interview with Sing Tao Daily. She also shares career prospects in the field of biomedical engineering, and encourages students who aspire to engage in scientific research to take on challenges. Please click here for details.

Cultivating a holistic view of research impacts

Researchers need to take a holistic mindset on bringing the results from laboratory to society. Computer scientists must remain constantly prepared for a wide spectrum of rapidly evolving paradigms and environments within computing networks and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Prof. Song GUO of Department of Computing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has fostered proactive teamwork to develop innovative research and impactful applications in the field of dynamic computing. As Director of the Edge Intelligence Laboratory at PolyU, Prof. GUO has inspired a team of active researchers to investigate diversely, from the Internet of Things (IoT) to wearable devices and systems over ubiquitous mobiles, algorithms, deep learning, and edge computing. Prof. GUO always believes that talent developments and team efforts are crucial for research and constantly promoting a promising environment with diverse opportunities for growth, knowledge acquisition, and achievements. “My consistent recognition as a highly cited researcher underscores our team’s influential contributions in the field,” said Prof. GUO, whose research in Edge-cloud AI is highly cited. Individually, the paradigms of edge computing, cloud and AI are all rapidly evolving technologies that garner significant interest from academia and industry. If the cloud server centre functions as the brain, then edge computing is the nervous system connecting to various intelligent terminals throughout the body. The number of edge devices is proliferating, with the generation of excessive amounts of data crucial for intelligent applications. In an era of the smart city and living environment, edge learning research is essential as a paradigm that complements cloud-based methods for big data analytics in the cloud-edge environment.   Edge-cloud AI “Edge-cloud AI has emerged as a widely cited research field involving the collaboration of edge-side clients, networking facilities, and cloud-side servers. Our primary objective is to perform systematic research to design and implement efficient systems for Edge-cloud AI applications,” said Prof. GUO. However, a comprehensive life-cycle optimisation is a key challenge to addressing various aspects of computing systems, such as edge AI risks, dynamic environments, on-device constraints and heterogeneous resources. In the previous research, these requirements were abstracted into a bottom-up hierarchy and followed by a comprehensive approach to designing the system from deployment to training, adaption, and governance perspectives. The primary focus of research embraces four major aspects for developing efficient Edge-cloud AI systems: Designing a collaborative training framework over heterogeneous edge environments Offering a lightweight deployment engine for resource-constrained edge devices Proposing fast adaptation mechanisms for evolutionary edge environments Designing trustworthy governance technologies to mitigate various Edge AI risks. Highly Cited Deep learning is critical to applications of IoT by improving the efficiency of deployment and management of IoT, enhancing security and privacy protection, and enabling various smart usage. Respectively, federated learning is a decentralised approach to training machine learning models without exposing their private data. Prof. GUO’s highly cited research, titled “Layer-Wised Model Aggregation for Personalised Federal Learning”, showed higher performance in collaborative learning while protecting data privacy. The study proposed a novel personalised federated learning training framework to optimise the personalised model aggregation of clients with heterogeneous data. IoT generates large amounts of data at the network edge. Machine learning models are often built on these data to enable the detection, classification, and prediction of future events. However, it is often impossible to send all the IoT data to the central server for centralised model training due to network bandwidth, storage, and privacy concern. Prof. GUO’s research, titled “A Learning-based Incentive Mechanism for Federated Learning”, was published in IEEE Internet of Things Journal in 2020. It studied the incentive mechanism for federated learning to motivate edge nodes to contribute model training. Notably, a deep reinforcement learning-based incentive mechanism was designed to determine the optimal pricing strategy for the parameter server and optimal training strategies for edge nodes. For edge computing, Prof. GUO’s research designed a decentralised algorithm for computation offloading to enable users to independently choose their offloading decisions. The highly cited research, titled “A Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Offloading Game in Edge Computing”, was published in IEEE Transactions on Computers in 2020.   Practical applications Leveraging the Edge-cloud AI research platform, Prof. GUO's team has successfully applied the findings to real-world applications. For instance, the smart health project, which deploys lightweight medical models on edge devices, precisely enables body posture analysis with 90% classification accuracy. This “Dr Body Scan” posture analysis system has become the first automated, all-in-one machine for accurate diagnosis and evaluation of human posture. It won the Hong Kong Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Awards 2021 for providing impactful solutions for social and business needs.  Another smart transportation project uses neural video enhancement techniques to address vulnerabilities in autonomous vehicles by taking hardware, software, network environment and real-time demands into account. It effectively leads to up to 20 times reduced traffic. Overall, these real-time video inference algorithms and neural video enhancement models provide solid foundations for Edge AI applications.  “We take pride in balancing academic publications and practical applications. Alongside our academic achievements, we have published two books and secured over eight patents related to Edge AI,” said Prof. GUO. These accomplishments vividly build the value of research on social and economic benefits and make the connection between academia and industry. Collaboration with universities, hospitals, government, and charity organisations is essential for researchers with a proactive vision of real-world impacts. Also, international exchanges on global conferences participation and top-notch institutes visits are motivational activities to explore cutting-edge technology and gain in-depth knowledge.   Research Interests: Edge AI, Edge Computing, 6G, Big Data, Machine Learning, Distributed Systems, Mobile Computing Highly Cited Researcher: 2020-2022 (Clarivate Analytics) Selected Highly Cited Publications: S. Guo, Y. Zhan Y., P. Li, J. Zhang, A Deep Reinforcement Learning based Offloading Game in Edge Computing, IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 69, issue 6, June 2020. S. Guo, Y. Zhan, P. Li, Z. Qu, D. Zeng, A Learning-Based Incentive Mechanism for Federated Learning, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 7, issue 7, July 2020.  S. Guo, X. Ma, J. Zhang, W. Xu, Layer-Wised Model Aggregation for Personalized Federated Learning, Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 10092-10101, 2022.   Download Version

Two PolyU scholars conferred as RGC Senior Research Fellow and Research Fellow

Two scholars from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) have been awarded Fellowships under the Research Grants Council’s (RGC) Senior Research Fellow Scheme (SRFS) and Research Fellow Scheme (RFS) 2023/24 respectively for their excellence in cross-disciplinary research. Prof. Meng NI, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Construction and Environment and Professor of the Department of Building and Real Estate, has been awarded SRFS funding, while also being conferred the title “RGC Senior Research Fellow”. His cross-field research project aims to promote sustainable and clean energy generation. Situated across the disciplines of energy engineering and environment, Prof. Ni’s research interests include fuel cells, rechargeable metal-air batteries, electrochemical water-splitting and electrochemical systems for low-grade waste heat utilization. Additionally, he serves as a reviewer for more than 80 academic journals including top-tier publications such as Science, Nature Energy, Nature Communications, Joule and Advanced Materials. Prof. Buyang LI, Professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics, has received funding under the RFS and is conferred the title “RGC Research Fellow”. His research focuses on addressing pioneering mathematics questions. Prof. Li’s research endeavours in applied, numerical and computational mathematics have led to the discovery of solutions to a wide variety of mathematics questions. His contributions to the field of mathematics have also earned him the Hong Kong Mathematical Society Young Scholars Award 2022, which recognised his excellence in both research and academia within the mathematics domain. Prof. Christopher CHAO, PolyU Vice President (Research and Innovation), extended his congratulations to the awardees and said, “The accomplishments of the successful scholars highlight PolyU’s exceptional capacity and competitiveness in promoting and conducting multifaceted research across various academic disciplines. Their achievements serve as an inspiration to other researchers, encouraging them to persist in pursuing impactful research for the betterment of society.” The achievements of the two researchers demonstrate PolyU’s outstanding academic and research capabilities in interdisciplinary fields, as well as the University’s commitment to scientific research with the goal of addressing global societal needs. The SRFS and RFS aim to provide sustained support to exceptionally outstanding researchers at the UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong. Each scheme provides ten grants to scholars from any academic discipline, with funding support for a period of 60 months. The supporting university receives a fellowship grant of around HK$7.8 million for SRFS and HK$5.2 million for RFS per award. Details of the two awardees’ research: Senior Research Fellow Scheme Project Coordinator: Prof. Meng Ni, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Construction and Environment and Professor of the Department of Building and Real Estate Project Title: “Protonic ceramic fuel cells for clean power generation: From new cathode materials to new stack designs” Abstract: Characterised by their high efficiency and low emission, protonic ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs) are power sources that promise to replace conventional thermal power plants. Despite this, the practical performance of a PCFC stack remains limited due to high energy at the cathode and the non-uniform distribution of reactants in a traditional PCFC stack. The project adopts both the trial-and-error and machine learning-based approaches to facilitate new cathode material development. Through multi-physics modelling and optimisation techniques, unconventional stack designs, including several nature-inspired stack configurations, will be evaluated for PCFC. The research integrates engineering, chemistry, physics and material science to address the complex challenges of using PCFC for clean power generation. Research Fellow Scheme Project Coordinator: Prof. Buyang Li, Professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics Project Title: “Challenges, numerical analysis and new computational methods for curvature-driven surface evolutions and related problems” Abstract: This project aims to address a series of long-standing mathematical questions related to the stability and convergence of parametric finite element algorithms for approximating surface evolution under geometric flows and interface evolution under two-phase Navier-Stokes flows (such as gas bubbles in liquids). The research is expected to produce novel insights into the foundational algorithms for curvature-driven surface evolutions and new computational methods that can improve the accuracy, stability and mesh quality in approximating surface evolutions.

PolyU researchers collaboratively develop high-performance titanium alloys through additive manufacturing

The industrial production of titanium alloys has always been plagued by challenges associated with quality and waste management. Engineering scientists from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), in collaboration with RMIT University and the University of Sydney, have successfully used additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to solve these long-standing issues in titanium alloy production. The research study, titled “Strong and ductile titanium-oxygen-iron alloys by additive manufacturing”, was recently published in Nature. Titanium alloys are advanced lightweight materials that play an indispensable role in many critical applications. The research team’s discovery of the innovative use of additive manufacturing for the production of titanium alloys and potentially other metal materials offers numerous advantages, such as reduced costs, improved performance, and sustainable waste management. Through the use of 3D printing, the research team has produced a new strong, ductile, and sustainable titanium alloy (α–β Ti-O-Fe alloy). These properties are achieved through the incorporation of inexpensive and abundant oxygen and iron, which are the two most powerful stabilising elements and strengtheners for α–β phase titanium alloys. The new titanium alloy exhibits immense potential for diverse applications, ranging from aerospace and marine engineering to consumer electronics and biomedical devices. Compared with the Ti-6AI-4V benchmark material, which has been widely used since its formulation in 1954, the new titanium alloy produced by the research team demonstrates better mechanical performance, with comparable ductility and considerably higher strength. Although traditional manufacturing methods, such as casting, can also be used to produce the new titanium alloy, the poor properties of the resulting material may render it unsuitable for practical engineering. Additive manufacturing effectively overcomes the limitations of traditional methods to improve alloy properties. The energy-intensive Kroll process, typically used to produce titanium alloys, generates off-grade sponge titanium, which accounts for approximately 10% of all sponge titanium, resulting in substantial waste and increased production costs. Additive manufacturing effectively addresses this problem by enabling the recycling of off-grade sponge titanium, converting the waste into powder for use as raw material. Dr Zibin CHEN, Assistant Professor of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at PolyU, an awardee of the Young Innovative Researcher Award 2022 and a leading author of the research, stated, “Our work can facilitate the recycling of more than 10% of the waste generated by the metal alloy production industry. This can significantly lower both material and energy costs for industries, contributing to environmental sustainability and carbon footprint reduction.” The research integrates alloy design, computational simulations, and experimental characterisation to explore the additive manufacturing process-microstructure-property space for the new titanium alloy (α–β Ti-O-Fe alloy). The study highlights that additive manufacturing enables the one-step production of complex and functional metal parts, thereby accelerating product development with reduced costs. Additionally, it can be used to fabricate metal parts with unique structures and compositions, which cannot be achieved using traditional methods. In terms of quality improvement, additive manufacturing allows for the adjustment of the microstructure of metal alloys, resulting in increased strength, flexibility, and resistance to corrosion and water. Furthermore, lightweight but strong metal parts with intricate internal patterns can be manufactured. This research breakthrough opens up possibilities for holistic and sustainable material design strategies facilitated by 3D printing. Prof. Keith K.C. CHAN, Chair Professor of Manufacturing Engineering at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at PolyU and a co-author of the study, noted, “This work can serve as a model or benchmark for other metal alloys that use 3D printing to enhance their properties and expand their applicability. Metal 3D printing is an emerging field, and it will take time before it is widely adopted in materials manufacturing.”  

PolyU awarded RGC Strategic Topics Grant to address societal needs in mental healthcare

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has received funding support from the Strategic Topics Grant (STG) 2023/24 of the Research Grants Council (RGC) for a health technology project aimed at promoting a new paradigm shift with creation of an integrated solution to address urgent mental healthcare needs. In Hong Kong, major psychiatric disorders (MPDs), such as major depressive disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, have a high prevalence rate of 13.3%. In addition, less than 40% of patients achieve complete symptoms control after initial treatment. Currently, the standard diagnosis criteria rely on cognitive and behavioural indicators. The PolyU project introduces an innovative and integrated strategy that utilises artificial intelligence (AI) and genomic and biomedical technology to support diagnosis, treatment planning and understanding of disease mechanisms. The project has been funded under the STG topic of using AI to address imminent challenges in healthcare, proposing an AI-based, data-driven approach to diagnosis and personalised therapy. Prof. Christopher CHAO, PolyU Vice President (Research and Innovation) said, “Under this new RGC funding scheme, PolyU has received the highest funding allocation among all institutions to support our scholars in conducting interdisciplinary and collaborative research in areas pertinent to the strategic needs of Hong Kong. PolyU has been working with various sectors to provide solutions to societal challenges. This major funding received from the RGC demonstrates PolyU’s experience in mental health research and its strengths in translating academic research for the benefit of the society.” Prof. Weixiong ZHANG, Chair Professor of Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics at PolyU, leads the project “Integrated innovative artificial intelligence, and genomic and biomedical technologies in healthcare: Objective diagnosis, personalised therapy and determination the etiology of major mental disorders,” which has been awarded funding of over HK$37 million. With a strong academic and research background in interdisciplinary fields, Prof. Zhang is a professor at both the Department of Health Technology and Informatics and the Department of Computing at PolyU. He is also a Hong Kong Global STEM Professor. The project aims to revolutionise the approach to diagnosing complex diseases like MPDS by shifting from symptom-based diagnosis to AI-based, data-driven diagnosis, disease study and personalised therapy. It builds upon Prof. Zhang’s extensive research in heuristic search, planning and optimisation, as well as his innovative techniques in AI and big data. By combining these techniques with genomics and biomedical technologies that he has been studying over the years, the project seeks to develop medical explainable AI (XAI) solutions for MPD diagnosis, etiology disease study and personalised therapy. Prof. Zhang said, “This is a multidisciplinary project that responds to the urgent need for new technologies to improve mental healthcare in Hong Kong and beyond. The research team combines expertise from diverse fields such as computer science, biology and medicine, to address some fundamental challenges in complex disease studies.” The project will involve 20 investigators and collaborators from eight institutions in Hong Kong, the Mainland China and the United States. The STG has been set up to support collaborative research in specific areas which can help Hong Kong overcome imminent challenges and tap fast-evolving opportunities. The maximum duration of a project is five years. The ceiling of project cost per project to be awarded by the RGC is $40 million (excluding on-costs).   Details of the funded project Project Coordinator: Prof. Weixiong Zhang - Chair Professor in Bioinformatics & Integrative Genomics in the Department of Health Technology and Informatics and Department of Computing - Hong Kong Global STEM Professor   Project Title: Integrated Innovative Artificial Intelligence, Genomic and Biomedical Technologies in Healthcare: Objective Diagnosis, Personalised Therapy, and Determining the Etiology of Major Mental Disorders Abstract:   The project proposes a paradigm shift from symptom-based diagnosis to AI-based, data-driven diagnosis and a personalised therapy approach. By integrating AI, genomics and biomedical technologies, the research team aims to create an explainable AI-enabled treatment planning system that can support reliable diagnosis and guide personalised repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy.   The research project encompasses three research focus (RF) areas: RF-1 : Identify genetic disease biomarkers and brain activity patterns to classify MPDs into distinct categories. RF-2 : Study the longitudinal impact of stress on diseases and their inheritance. RF-3 : Combine the findings of previous research focus areas by applying genetic biomarkers and brain patterns from RF-1 and the knowledge of disease mechanisms obtained from RF-2, so as to guide reliable diagnosis and personalised therapy, ultimately improving mental healthcare.    

PolyU announces the establishment of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition to nurture food specialists and promote innovative and sustainable development

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) announced the establishment of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition (FSN), which is Hong Kong’s first UGC-funded academic department specialising in Food Science and Nutrition. To celebrate its inauguration, an International Conference on Food and Human Health was held at PolyU, followed by a Grand Opening Ceremony last week (13-14 July). More than 300 guests, including government officials, community leaders, industry partners, and staff attended the opening ceremony. Miss LAU Lee Kwan Vivian, Permanent Secretary for Environment and Ecology Bureau (Food Branch) of the HKSAR; Dr LAM Tai-fai, Council Chairman of PolyU; Prof. Wing-tak WONG, Acting President of PolyU; Prof. Christopher CHAO, Vice President (Research and Innovation) of PolyU; Prof. Raymond WONG, Dean of Faculty of Science of PolyU; and Prof. CHEN Sheng, Head of Department of Food Science and Nutrition of PolyU, officiated the ceremony. Since 21st century, the food supply has become a complex and specialised industrial process, with quality management being a key challenge throughout the entire food supply chain. In 2008, PolyU launched the self-financed BSc (Hons) in Food Safety and Technology to address the escalating concerns of food safety related to the outbreak of a number of large-scale food safety incidents. Based on the key pillars of Food Safety, Food Technology, Human Nutrition, and Chinese Medicine, FSN is dedicated to providing professionally crafted trainings to nurture food specialists. FSN is also focused on addressing health-related issues and pursuing impactful research to promote innovative and sustainable development that benefits the world and mankind. Miss Lau Lee Kwan said, “With the establishment of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition, we expect that experts from relevant fields will come together to collaborate and share their knowledge and experience, making positive contributions to the development of innovative solutions to benefit society. We are also happy to see young professionals being groomed in the related fields.” Dr Lam Tai-fai said, “The new Department of Food Science and Nutrition is well positioned to become a centre of excellence in research, education, and outreach in the areas of food and human health. I am confident that the Department will make significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge in these areas for the betterment of society as a whole.” Two fascinating food projects were presented during the Grand Opening Ceremony. The first was an award-winning project on the AkkMore™ formula, which has been further developed into a low-calorie ice cream by Dr Gail CHANG, Research Assistant Professor of FSN. The second project was on modernised and sustainable mariculture at a demonstration farm, specifically the cultivation of grouper, by Dr Kevin KWOK, Associate Head of FSN. The grouper was served as one of the dishes at the Ceremony dinner. Prof. Raymond Wong said, “With the growing concern over food safety and sustainability, and nutrition-related health issues, our role has never been more important. Through the pursuit of excellence in holistic education, impactful research and knowledge transfer, we strive to contribute to the development of innovative solutions in Food Science and Nutrition for the betterment of our society.” Prof. Chen Sheng said, “We believe that the challenges we face in this field are multifaceted and require an interdisciplinary approach to tackle. That’s why our Department brings together scientists, nutritionists, engineers, and social scientists so that people with expertise in different areas can complement each other and work towards the common goal of improving human health.” FSN will work hand-in-hand with Research Institute for Future Food (RiFood) and Research Centre for Chinese Medicine Innovation (RCMI) to provide interdisciplinary solutions for major societal challenges through advanced research and knowledge transfer, creating positive impacts to improve the health and well-being of mankind.

PolyU mathematics scholar receives Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Award from the Ministry of Education

Mathematics scientist of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has received the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Award (Science and Technology) 2022. Prof . Tong YANG, Chair Professor of Mathematical Science in the Department of Applied Mathematics at PolyU has been bestowed the First-Class Award in Natural Science for a joint research project titled “Mathematical theory of compressible Navier-Stokes equations and related models.” The research was jointly conducted by Prof . Changjiang ZHU and Prof . Huanyao WEN at South China University of Technology The Awards from the Ministry of Education aim to recognize outstanding contributions made by researchers towards advancing scientific and technological development. The mathematics model, known as the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, is fundamental in describing the motion of compressible fluids, and its mathematical theory research has long been recognised as a significant research area in the global mathematics community. Prof. YANG has made significant contributions to scientific research on Conservation  laws, Boltzmann equation and Boundary layer theories. The awarded project is Prof. YANG’s core research area, and it is conducted in collaboration with South China University of Technology.  

PolyU partner with Transsion to advance display colour management technology

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) collaborates with Transsion Holdings to translate the latest research results of colour characterisation into actual products, so as to improve the display quality and user experience of smartphones. As smart products become indispensable in our daily life, the improvement of user experience on imaging systems largely depends on the colour calibration and management technologies. The research team led by Prof. WEI Minchen, Tommy, Director of Colour Imaging and Metaverse Research Centre at PolyU proposes to apply a 3D piecewise model to tackle the poor performance of conventional models. Based on the measurements of the tristimulus values of 64 combinations of digital signal values, the 3D piecewise model divides the display gamma encoded colour space into 27 subspaces and characterizes the crosstalk effects. This high-quality solution allows a fast and automatic colour calibration of smartphone displays, resulting in an average color difference ΔE00 reduced from 3.96 to 0.72, which reaches the industry-leading level. This solution has been implemented on the smartphone production line for automatic colour calibration, ensuring that users can enjoy accurate and faithful colour appearance under a wide range of viewing conditions.

Two PolyU projects awarded the RGC Theme-based Research Scheme funding

Two research projects led by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) have won close to HK$100 million funding from the Research Grants Council’s Theme-based Research Scheme (TRS) 2023/24 to foster sustainable development for the city. Prof. Yi-Qing NI, Chair Professor of Smart Structures and Rail Transit in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, leads the project “INTACT: Intelligent Tropical-storm-resilient System for Coastal Cities,” which has been awarded funding of HK$48.293 million. Addressing the challenges posed by extreme winds and complex urban environments, Prof. Ni’s project aims to mitigate the risk of tropical storms for high-rise building clusters in coastal cities by developing a real-time early-warning and resilience system. Enabling development of a sustainable environment is the ultimate research goal, which is one of the TRS designated research themes. Prof. CAO Jiannong, Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing in the Department of Computing, leads another project “High-performance Collaborative Edge Computing Enabling Smart City Applications: Framework and Methodologies,” which has received funding of HK$50.821 million. Pushing forward the development of smart cities, Prof. Cao’s research aims to meet the requirements of advanced applications such as autonomous vehicles, industrial IoT and the metaverse, by developing a collaborative edge computing framework. The project has been funded under the designated research theme of advancing emerging research and innovations important to Hong Kong. Prof. Christopher CHAO, PolyU Vice President (Research and Innovation) said, “PolyU is dedicated to transforming research excellence into impactful and practical innovations through multidisciplinary collaborations. This remarkable funding achievement is encouraging and highlights PolyU’s strategic importance in driving Hong Kong’s long-term development. Moving forward, we remain committed to providing all-round and in-depth support to our scholars, enabling them to address global challenges.” The TRS aims to focus the research efforts of UGC-funded universities on themes of strategic importance to the long-term development of Hong Kong. The maximum duration of a funded project is five years. Details of the two funded research projects: Project Coordinator Prof Yi-Qing Ni Director of the National Rail Transit Electrification and Automation Engineering Technology Research Centre (Hong Kong Branch) Yim, Mak, Kwok & Chung Professor in Smart Structures Chair Professor of Smart Structures and Rail Transit in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Project Title INTACT: Intelligent Tropical-storm-resilient System for Coastal Cities Abstract Ongoing population growth and the impact of climate change pose heightened risks of typhoon and tropical storm-related hazards in coastal cities. Hong Kong was hit by Super Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018, causing significant disruption to the safety of the city and well-being of residents. The objective of this project is to minimize the losses caused by typhoons by establishing an intelligent tropical-storm-resilient system for coastal cities. The project will devise a framework that enables efficient and accurate assessment of turbulence flows from sparse measurements. It will also quantify urban-environment tropical storm risks that arise due to complex urban aerodynamics. The project will establish a real-time urban typhoon risk early-warning and management prototype that will be made accessible to the public for guiding effective emergency responses, such as evacuation measures and the temporary reinforcement of glass panels. The project outcomes will also lead to new methodologies and design codes/standards for high-rise buildings that are more resistant to tropical storms. This will in turn create a safer environment, benefiting the construction industries and developers, public and city planners in the long run. The fundamental scientific discoveries and technologies developed for Hong Kong’s complex urban environment will have easy transferability to other cities, including those in the GBA, and can serve as case models for global reference. Approved Budget* HK$48.293 million;   Project Coordinator Prof Jiannong Cao Dean of Graduate School Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing in the Department of Computing Project Title High-performance Collaborative Edge Computing Enabling Smart City Applications: Framework and Methodologies Abstract Existing edge computing projects focus on vertical collaboration among cloud, edge and end devices while neglecting horizontal edge-to-edge collaborations, which leads to unoptimised resource utilisation, restricted service coverage and uneven performance. This project aims to build a new smart city computing infrastructure enabled by collaborative edge computing with edge/cloud collaboration, city-scale edge network deployment and built-in AI services. The Collaborative Edge Computing Framework (CECF) proposed by this project aims to construct a future ubiquitous computing infrastructure by connecting, sharing and managing the resources of a large number of edge nodes. CECF provides new abstractions and functionalities for geo-distributed edge nodes to share computing and data resources and collaborate to perform application tasks, enabling advanced smart city applications. The project addresses many key challenges, including large-scale resource management, performance-guaranteed task scheduling, resource-aware edge AI and secure data sharing. It will ultimately enable emerging advanced smart city applications to flourish in HK and establish a first-mover advantage for the City in new computing infrastructure. Approved Budget* HK$50.821 million   *RGC provides 90% of the approved budget and the remaining 10% will be provided by the coordinating University.