News

COMP Annual Research Day 2019

Organised by COMP and its Postgraduate Research Student Association, the eighth edition of COMP Annual Research Day (CARD) was successfully concluded on 13 June at PolyU. Under the theme of “COMP TechVenture Competition”, 65 students with different research backgrounds formed ten teams to compete for the champion. Ir Prof. Alexander Wai, Vice President (Research Development) of PolyU, gave a warm welcome to all participants. Prof. Qing Li, Chair Professor and Head of COMP officiated the opening which marked the start of CARD 2019. All teams presented their technology venture proposals to a panel of “Angel Investors”, including Prof. Lui Sha, Distinguished Chair Professor of COMP, Dr Steven Wei, Associate Professor of School of Accounting and Finance of PolyU, Mr HL Cheng, President of PolyU Computing Alumni Association, and Dr Kai Zheng, Director of Russell Lab of Huawei Technology. Angel Investors then determined how much money they would invest in each team after assessing their performance. After two rounds of evaluation, Team D won the highest amount of investment with their proposal “Smart Network Interface CARD”. In this project, they developed a novel low-power Transmission-Analytics Processing Unit, which can switch, in runtime, between a CPU mode and a GPU mode on the same chip. At the closing, Dr Bin Xiao, Associate Professor and Chair of Departmental Research Committee of COMP, expressed his gratitude to Huawei Technology for sponsoring the prizes of CARD this year and appreciated research students for their great effort put into the competition. CARD is an important annual event of COMP which gathers all research students and academic staff together. It provides an excellent platform for students to share their research outcomes to their peers and faculty members as well as promoting cross-area collaborations. Award Awardee Title of Proposal First Place Team D CHEN Liushan HU Chuang LIU Yongxu YANG Xiao ZHAN Xian ZHANG Xiang Smart Network Interface CARD Second Place Team I FAN Xueli HOU Ningning LI Yushi LI Zecheng LU Xingye WU Haotian YU Xinbo Mental Health Management Platform Third Place Team G JIANG Shan SAHNI Yuvraj TUNG Cheung Leong WEN Zhiyuan YANG Ruosong YANG Yanni YANG Yu Restore Your Mind with a Smart Voice Recorder

Best Project Award Competition 2019

COMP hosted the annual Best Project Award Competition on 1 June with the aim of recognising undergraduate students’ great effort put into their Capstone Projects. Five students were shortlisted to compete for the awards. This year, in addition to our academic staff, we invited executives from the ICT industry such as Hong Kong Cyberport, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, and InfoTech Services as well as a representative from Computing Alumni Association to be the judges. The judging criteria included project background study, design/ methodology, implementation, evaluation, presentation and video demonstration. This competition not only serves as a platform for students to showcase their outstanding work but also provides a good learning opportunity for them to further enhance and explore new possibilities for their projects based on the recommendations made by the judges. Award Project Title Awardee Champion Reminiscence Therapy VR for Dementia TAI Sai Kin First Runner-up Award Fast and Stable Photorealistic Video Style Transfer NG Tsz Lok Second Runner-up Award Sentiment Classification of Cantonese Restaurant Reviews JIAO Ying  

PolyU JUPAS Consultation Day: Admissions Strategies 2019

COMP hosted an Info Seminar at the PolyU JUPAS Consultation Day on 18 May to provide updated programme information on Broad Discipline of Computing to the JUPAS applicants and attracted over a hundred of participants. Prof. Qing Li, Chair Professor and Head of COMP welcomed the attendees by introducing the recent development of computer science as well as the strengths and achievements of the Department. Dr Hong-va Leong, Associate Professor & Associate Head, gave a detailed presentation on the features, curriculum and entrance requirements of a brand new programme – BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence that we will offer starting from the academic year of 2019/20. Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor & Associate Head, on the other hand summarised the diversified learning opportunities that we provide to our students, such as Global Computing Programme, mentorship programme, study tour and outbound exchange. We also invited two undergraduate students to share their internship and study experience. After the programme session, we also arranged two mini-lectures on FinTech & Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence which were delivered by Dr Allen Au, our Assistant Professor, and Dr Richard Lui, our Teaching Fellow, respectively to further arouse students’ interests in hot IT topics and technology trend. Participants concentrated on the lectures and interacted actively with the speakers.

Mentorship Programme Kick-off Gathering

To encourage students in acquiring the skills in career planning and personal development, COMP collaborates with the Computing Alumni Association (CAA) and the Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia (IFTA) to launch two mentorship programmes respectively. A kick-off gathering was held on 15 May for students to meet with their mentors. Prof. Qing Li, Chair Professor and Head of COMP officiated the opening and Mr HL Cheng, President of CAA delivered welcoming remarks. Mr Darron Sun, Mentorship Coordinator of CAA, and Mr Paul Pong, Chairman of IFTA, gave an introduction of the mentorship programmes. We have invited alumni, professional practitioners and executives to join as our mentors. Each participating student will be assigned a mentor and group activities with other mentors will also be organized to promote cross-industry sharing. The programmes offer reciprocal opportunities for mentors to understand the career aspirations of the younger generation while at the same time for mentees to know about workplace culture, business trends and prospects in established professions, widening their exposure to different career paths and options.

Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) 2018

We are proud to announce that Prof. Jiannong Cao, COMP’s Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing, who led the project “Theoretical Models and Techniques of Distributed Computing in Wireless Network” with Dr Dan Wang, COMP’s Associate Professor, received the Second-class Award in Natural Science in the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) 2018 from the Ministry of Education to honour their contributions and discoveries made in natural science.

COMP 45th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture Series

COMP launched the Distinguished Lecture Series in celebration of its 45th anniversary and the second lecture “Big Social Media Data and Its Challenges for Machine Learning” by Prof. Huan Liu, Professor from Arizona State University, was held on 17 April at PolyU with a full house participation. Attendees were impressed by Prof. Liu’s analytical insight and pioneering thinking. He examined some critical issues related to big social media data such as how to make `big’ data bigger, how to protect a user’s privacy without the loss of service utility, and how to evaluate machine learned results without ground truth and at scale. Throughout 2019, we will invite renowned scholars and researchers to deliver Distinguished Lectures on a wide range of hot IT topics, including AI, Big Data, Social Media, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing.

Computer App Programming (CAP) Competition 2019

COMP and the Hong Kong Association for Computer Education (HKACE) jointly organise the sixth edition of ”Computer App Programming (CAP) Competition” in 2019. To foster creativity and further promote STEM education, the competition is divided into “CAP Test” and “CAP Day” this year. On 10 April, “CAP Test” was held at PolyU which attracted 430 secondary school students to enroll. Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor & Associate Head of COMP, delivered the welcome remarks and shared his view on learning with the students. The “CAP Test” included multiple-choice and short questions about probability, number system, linear programming, logical and IQ reasoning in order to assess students’ computational knowledge, logical thinking and problem solving skills. The top three students will be awarded with Champion, First Runner-up and Second Runner-up.

Virtual Reality Competition for Green Deck

We are pleased to announce that our students received the Second Runner-up Award and the Commendation Award with their projects “Promoting Horticulture in Green Deck” and “Wine Festival” respectively at the prize presentation ceremony of the “Virtual Reality Competition for Green Deck” on 3 April at i-Space@PolyU Library. Prof. Qin Lu, Professor of COMP, was invited as one of the judges while Dr Walter Fung, Teaching Fellow of COMP, provided guidance to students on project design. The judging criteria included innovativeness, graphic design, use of “FlexSim” features and presentation skills. The competition aimed to enhance the awareness and engagement of the Green Deck proposal among PolyU students by using cutting-edge technology to design scenarios for the proposed Green Deck. It was organised by PolyU’s Alumni Affairs and Development Office, Campus Development Office, Communications and Public Affairs Office, Department of Computing, and Pao Yue-kong Library. Award Project Title Awardee Department Second Runner-up Award Promoting Horticulture in Green Deck IP Ka Yan Lorelei SN LUO Yanwen Yami COMP MAK Sze Long Richard EIE Commendation Award Wine Festival CHAN Yuet Hang Noel COMP CHAN Yuet Yu Cherry COMP LAI Hiu Long Alex COMP        

COMP 45th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture Series

COMP launched the “Distinguished Lecture Series” in celebration of its 45th anniversary and the first lecture “AI at Dawn - opportunities and challenges” by Prof. Dacheng Tao, Professor of Computer Science at The University of Sydney, was held on 11 March at PolyU with a full house participation. Prof. Tao reviewed the recent progress on Artificial Intelligence (AI) by introducing some representative advancements from algorithms to applications, and illustrated the stairs for its realization from perceiving to learning, reasoning and behaving. He also brought some examples of AI challenges and share his insights and perspectives with the attendees. To read the poster of the seminar, please click here. Throughout 2019, we will invite renowned scholars and researchers to deliver Distinguished Lectures on a wide range of hot IT topics, including AI, Big Data, Social Media, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing.

Research Grants Council Collaborative Research Fund Project Kick-off Ceremony

Today the Department of Computing (COMP) hosted the Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) Project Kick-off Ceremony at PolyU for the project “Multi-sourced Event Detection and Multi-dimensional Analysis based on Event Cube”. Coordinated by Prof. Qing Li, Chair Professor of Data Science and Head of COMP, the project was granted over HK$5.3 million from the Research Grants Council in 2018/19. At the ceremony, under the witness of our Officiating Guest, Prof. Guohua Chen, Associate Vice President (Research Support) of PolyU, Prof. Li signed a collaborative agreement with the Co-Principal Investigators: Prof. Lei Chen from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Prof. Ho-fung Leung from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Dr Nancy Yu from the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, City University of Hong Kong; and Dr Hong-va Leong, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP. Social media plays a vital role in affecting public opinions and policy making, and topics like event detection and mining, public sentiment analysis, etc., become increasingly hot in social science and financial research. Targeting at youngsters suicide detection, this CRF project aims to provide insight on event detection and prediction underlying the Big Data. The project team proposes to develop techniques for untargeted event detection (UED) and targeted event detection (TED) from multi-sourced data, and build event cube models to support various event queries and analysis thereon.