News

PolyU joins hands with Peng Cheng Laboratory on big data and artificial intelligence research

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Peng Cheng Laboratory (PCL) reached a partnership intention and a strategic cooperation signing ceremony was held on 20 April 2020. The agreement was signed by Ir Prof. Alexander Wai, Deputy President and Provost of PolyU, and Prof. Wen Gao, Director of PCL, via a cloud-based video conferencing. Participating in this collaboration, the Department of Computing (COMP) will leverage its expertise to support PolyU and PCL advancing the growth of Big Data Analytics, Advanced Networks, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics, Blockchains, and Smart Health through the sharing of laboratory equipment and scientific research resources, thus to foster the development of groundbreaking technologies, as well as academic exchanges and talent cultivation. The strategic cooperation will further exploit PolyU and PCL’s research predominance and excellence. It will bring new opportunities to both parties, strengthen the connection with industrial partners and contribute to the Greater Bay Area with practical and impactful innovations. PCL, established as a Provincial Research Laboratory by the Guangdong Provincial Government, amasses high-quality innovative resources, builds relevant major scientific infrastructure, and carries out interdisciplinary and collaborative research in the field of network information, AI and cyberspace security.

Online Career Talk - “Workforce Demands in Digital Age”

To provide COMP students with more insights on the career development in computing and IT, we co-organised an online career talk on “Workforce Demands in Digital Age” with Institute of Financial Technologist of Asia (IFTA) on 29 April 2020. We invited various executives and practitioners from the banking and finance industry, as well as IT experts, to analyse the manpower demand in this digital era and share advice to our students on shaping their career path. Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP, and Mr Paul Pong, Chairman of IFTA, gave a brief introduction and welcomed all participants. A wide range of topics was covered during the career talk, including career opportunities in virtual banks, cybersecurity landscape and workforce demands, how to step on the ladder towards IT professionals, and recent career development in the FinTech industry. There were lively discussions and good engagement between the speakers and the attendees. The career talk enabled our students to grasp the recent trend in IT and understand the technical skill sets and professional certifications required. COMP students could click here to log in and watch the recorded video.

Prof. Jiannong Cao is appointed as Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Endowed Professorship in Data Science

We are proud to announce that Prof. Jiannong Cao has been appointed as Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science under PolyU Endowed Professorship Scheme, being the first-ever Endowed Professor in the Department. The Endowed Professorship further cements Prof. Cao’s status as an outstanding scholar and well-established authority in this area of research. Prof. Cao has joined COMP since 1997. He is currently the Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing and the Director of University Research Facility in Big Data Analytics (UBDA). His research interests include parallel and distributed computing, wireless sensing and networks, pervasive and mobile computing, and big data and cloud computing. Prof. Cao has published over 600 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings. He has directed and participated in over 90 research and development projects and, as a principal investigator, obtained over HK$60 million grants from national and local funding agencies as well as key technology companies. He is also a Fellow of IEEE and a Distinguished Member of ACM. The Endowed Professorship Scheme provides donors with the unique opportunity to partner with the University to advance research and academic activities of a discipline of their choice for the betterment of the society. Endowed Professors can take advantage of extra resources to continue their excellent work in research and teaching.

Prof. Ajay Kumar is appointed as the Director of Biometrics Research and Innovation Centre

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Ajay Kumar has been appointed as the Director of the Biometrics Research and Innovation Centre (formerly known as ‘Biometrics Research Centre’) of PolyU. Prof. Kumar received the PhD degree from The University of Hong Kong in 2001. He has joined the Department of Computing of PolyU since 2009 and his research interests include biometrics and computer vision-based industrial inspection. Prof. Kumar’s significant achievement in the development and promotion of biometrics based human identification, particularly the advancement of 2D, 3D and multispectral hand biometrics matching algorithms has earned him the Fellowship of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for contributions to non-contact hand-based biometrics recognition in 2018 and the Fellowship of International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR) in 2016. Prof. Kumar has also been elected as President of IEEE Biometrics Council 2021 – 2022 and he is serving as President-Elect until 2020. The Biometrics Research and Innovation Centre is dedicated to both advancing the frontiers of research in the multidisciplinary area of biometric computing and developing cutting edge biometrics technologies for the growth and development of related industries in Hong Kong and China.

Prof. Ajay Kumar is elected as President of IEEE Biometrics Council

Congratulations to Prof. Ajay Kumar on being elected as President of IEEE Biometrics Council 2021 - 2022 and he will be serving as “President-Elect” until 2020. Prof. Kumar received the PhD degree from The University of Hong Kong in 2001. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi from 2005 to 2007. He has been working in the Department of Computing of PolyU since 2009 and currently working as a Professor. His research interests are on biometrics and computer vision for industrial inspection. Prof. Kumar is a Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of IAPR. He holds seven U.S. patents and has authored a book on “Contactless 3D Fingerprint Identification”. He has served on the IEEE Biometrics Council as the Vice President (Publications) in 2011 - 2015. He is currently an Editorial Board member of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis Machine Intelligence and IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science. He was on Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security from 2010 to 2013. He has served as area chair, programme chair and general chair in several top international conferences and workshops in the field of his research interest. The mission of the IEEE Biometrics Council is to advance, promote and coordinate work in the field of biometric technology and applications throughout IEEE, and to expand IEEE's role in this interdisciplinary field. The field of interest of the Council is the theory, design, and application of biometric characterization of human beings, based on physiological and/ or behavioural features and traits, in particular for identification, identity verification, authentication, encryption, recognition and medical diagnosis. The Council promotes technical activities, sponsors technical meetings and sessions, publishes periodicals, promotes educational activities, develops standards, and engages in any other activity defined within its fields of interest.

Faculty of Engineering Research Grant Achievement Award 2018

We are proud to announce that our Associate Professors, Dr Maggie Li and Dr Daniel Luo, received the Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Research Grant Achievement Award for 2018 in recognition of their great efforts and contributions in securing external competitive research grants. Dr Li focuses on the research areas of Natural Language Processing, Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis, Social Media Mining, Information Extraction, and Document Summarization. Dr Luo conducts research on Android Security, Vulnerability and Privacy, Blockchain, Network Security, and Traffic Analysis. Both of them have led and participated in a number of multidisciplinary research projects in recent years. The Faculty Research Committee has set up FENG Research Grant Achievement Award and FENG Industrial and Engineering Services Grant Achievement Award since 2003 to recognise the outstanding performance of FENG academic staff members in securing external competitive research grants. To be qualified, a staff member must successfully secure three external competitive research grants in 36 months or four external competitive research grants in 60 months, as Principal Investigator/ co-Principal Investigator. Congratulations to Dr Li and Dr Luo for their outstanding achievements.

Highly Cited Researchers 2019

We are proud to announce that Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor of Computer Vision and Image Analysis, is recognised in the list of Highly Cited Researchers 2019 by Clarivate Analytics for his exceptional research impact in the field of Engineering. Prof. Zhang has been named for the fifth consecutive year since 2015. Prof. Zhang’s research interests include Computer Vision, Image and Video Processing, Pattern Recognition and Deep Learning, and he has published more than 250 papers in these areas. According to Google Scholar, his works have been cited more than 47,000 times and hish-index is 105. The Highly Cited Researchers recognises the world's most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.

Faculty Awards for Outstanding Performance/ Achievement 2018/19

We are proud to announce that three COMP staff members have received the Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Awards 2018/19 in recognition of their excellent performance and achievements. This reflects the great effort and contributions made by our staff members.   Awardee Award Dr Daniel LUO, Associate Professor Merit Award in Research and Scholarly Activities (Individual) Merit Award in Research and Scholarly Activities (Individual) Dr Henry CHAN, Associate Professor (Team Leader) Dr Peter NG, Teaching Fellow Merit Award in Services (Team)   The winners are chosen by a Faculty Assessment Panel comprising Heads (or his/ her delegate) and chaired by Dean of FENG, from amongst a pool of well-qualified nominees put forward by individual departments. The selection is made with reference to the indicative criteria for assessment as laid down by the University.

Prof. Song Guo is Appointed as Editor in Chief for the new IEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society

Congratulations to Prof. Song Guo, Professor and Associate Head of COMP, on being appointed the inaugural Editor in Chief of the IEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society (OJ-CS), for the 2020 - 2022 term. Prof. Guo joined the Department in 2016. His research interests include big data, cloud computing, mobile computing and distributed systems. With more than 450 papers published in major conferences and journals, Prof. Guo is also an associate editor of four IEEE transactions. He has served as chair for numerous IEEE conferences, and is currently serving on the IEEE Communications Society’s Board of Governors. The OJ-CS is a rigorously peer-reviewed forum for rapid publication of open access articles describing high-impact results in all areas of interest to the IEEE Computer Society. The new journal will publish its first articles in 2020.

The 44th International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Asia Nanchang Regional Contest

A COMP student team, “HKPU01”, formed by Mr Baohang Sun, Ms Ying Xu and Mr Haozhe Yan, won the Silver Medal and First Solve Award in the 44th International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Asia Nanchang Regional Contest held at Jiangxi Normal University, China on 9 – 10 November. All contestants formed a team of three to solve thirteen real world problems within five hours. This year, over 330 teams participated and they had to solve as many problems as possible to fight for the champion. “HKPU01” finally solved four problems and was awarded with the Silver Medal. The team was also the first one who successfully solved the Special Number 12 Problem, thus winning the First Solve Award. The ICPC is an algorithmic programming contest for college students. It is the oldest, largest, and the most prestigious programming contest in the world which fosters creativity, teamwork, innovation, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure.