News

COMP students attained Unity Developer certification

We are pleased to announce that 33 COMP students passed the rigorous Unity Certified Developer examination in June and attained the professional certification after joining the Unity Training/Certification Programme (TCP) launched by COMP in January. The Department gave strong support to the students by sponsoring them on the examination fees. COMP always emphasises the integration of tertiary education with emerging industry practice. Thus to get students well-prepared for the certification, the six-month training programme not only covered examination materials but also included sharing and workshops by Unity evangelists and experts, and game developers from Tencent, Kingsoft and other local games companies. Unity Developer was ranked number 7 on LinkedIn's Top 20 Emerging Jobs in the US in 2017. The certification further recognises our students’ knowledge and technical skills that meet the industry standards and facilitates their career development in the games industry.

PolyU Computing Graduate Employment Survey 2017

The latest PolyU Graduate Employment Survey was released recently. The average starting salary of COMP graduates reached HK$17,409, which is the second highest in the Faculty of Engineering. Among all the COMP respondents, the top three monthly salaries range from HK$30,000 to HK$34,000. As computing plays an important role in all businesses, our graduates started their career in a wide range of areas, such as IT, FinTech, Healthcare, Government, Logistics, Business Services, Telecom, Digital Marketing, Multimedia and Entertainment, etc. In other words, studying computing allows students to develop their career in many different business sectors. COMP introduced a new internship option this year, allowing students to gain up to 32 weeks full-time working experience while still graduating in four years. This will further strengthen students’ employability. Top Salary Examples of COMP Graduates in 2017 Industry Job Scope Average Monthly Salary Financial Institution Information Technology HK$34,000 Retail - Consumer Product Store Management HK$33,000 Software Consultancy R&D Engineering HK$30,000 Software Consultancy R&D Engineering HK$27,600 Healthcare Programming HK$27,100 Healthcare Programming HK$26,400 Software Consultancy Programming HK$23,000 Electronics Programming HK$23,000 Telecommunications Marketing HK$21,600 Electronics Programming HK$21,500 Electronic Payment System Engineering HK$20,800  

COMP staff received a Best Paper Award at ACM e-Energy 2018

We are pleased to announce that our Associate Professor Dr Dan Wang and his research team received a Best Paper Award at the ninth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (ACM e-Energy) held in Germany from 12 - 15 June, for the paper titled “Data Driven Chiller Sequencing for Reducing HVAC Electricity Consumption in Commercial Buildings”. This paper presents a data-driven platform that can substantially improve the efficiency of HVAC operations. The core insight is to analyse the HVAC performance in run-time, so as to control HVAC operations in fine-granularity. This paper lands the general industry AIOps concept with one specific case in HVAC industry. The evaluation using data from One, Two and Three Pacific Place at Admiralty shows a potential annual cost saving of HK$2.7 million. ACM e-Energy aims to be the premier venue for researchers working in the broad areas of computing and communication for smart energy systems (including the smart grid), and in energy-efficient computing and communication systems. By bringing together researchers in a high-quality single-track conference with significant opportunities for individual and small-group interaction, it serves as a major forum for presentations and discussions that will shape the future of this area.

COMP Workshops for JUPAS Applicants

Following the successful initiative last year, thematic workshops on Virtual Reality (VR) and Cyber Security were held on both 21 June and 26 June, attracting over a hundred JUPAS applicants to attend. The VR workshops covered topics on Projection VR, Cave System, Editor Basics, Game Objects Models and Materials, Scripting Primer, and Interactive Motion Sensing, etc. Participants were able to learn about the skills of creating an interactive VR application with a Google Cardboard, which they found it very interesting. During the Cyber Security workshops, topics including Shift Cipher and Substitution, Cryptography, Encryption Method, IoT Security and Malware Analysis were introduced. There were some in-class exercises for the students to practise code breaking and encryption technique. In addition to the workshops, we arranged few consultation sessions for these students to meet with our academic advisors, answering their questions about JUPAS admission. Participants enjoyed the classes very much as they were given the opportunities to gain new learning experience at university as well as further foster their interests towards computer science and information technology.

Big Datathon 2018 @ PolyU

Co-organised by PolyU and Radica, “Big Datathon” – an annual hackathon event focusing on the application of big data, data analytics, and data science was successfully held at PolyU on 26 - 27 May. This competition gathered real business challenges and data from real companies for contestants to solve. It attracted over 150 university students, graduates, working professionals and startups. A team of three COMP students (Ka Yu Chan, Tsz Hin Chan and Cheuk Yin Wong) won the PolyU Champion Award with their project “Course Designer”. On the first competition day, 43 teams of 2 to 5 were formed and each team selected one of the business challenges provided by PolyU, Radica and UBS respectively. By using fresh data and advanced tools, participants worked together in 24 hours to solve the data problems or pain points happening in the real business world. The team projects were evaluated by a panel of judges from academia and industry under four key criteria including quality of data crawling, creativity and innovation, demonstration of capability, and communication skills. Ten teams became finalists and competed for the PolyU / Radica / UBS Champion Awards, Best Data Hunter Award, Most Innovative Award and Best Presentation Award. Big Datathon provides a great platform for data talents to put their technical knowledge into practice and on the other hand, for corporates to kick-off their big data projects and access to potential solutions.

Career Networking cum Best Project Award Competition 2018

To help students prepare for their career, COMP organised a Career Networking cum Best Project Award Competition on 9 June. This networking event enabled students to interact with various companies’ representatives and explored different job opportunities. At the same time, among this year’s Final Year Projects, five were shortlisted to compete for Technological Achievement Award, Innovation Award, Outstanding Project Award as well as the Most ‘Liked’ Award. The panel of judge was formed by the executives from Hong Kong Cyberport, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, InfoTech Services and CITIC Telecom International. These industrial leaders not only shared the market trends and expectation from employers but also tips on career planning and interview skills. Awardee Award CHEUNG Sin Hang Technological Achievement Award and Most 'Liked' Award LEUNG Ka Cheong Innovation Award MA Mingyu Outstanding Project Award and Most 'Liked' Award      

COMP Annual Research Day 2018

Building on the success of previous years, the Department and the Postgraduate Research Student Association (PRSA) of Computing jointly organised the seventh COMP Annual Research Day (CARD) with the theme of “Smart Robotics in FinTech” at PolyU on 8 June. Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP officiated at the opening. To encourage cross-area collaboration, students with different research background and areas formed 16 groups of 4 - 5 to work together. Each group had to identify important research problems, proposed innovative solutions and presented their work to a panel of judges. Based on the significance of the problems, novelty and impact of solutions as well as presentation skills, the Best Proposal Awards went to three teams with the highest scores. That afternoon, Dr Zhen Cao, Principle Engineer of Huawei Technologies, was invited to deliver a speech on “Introduction to Central Software Institute – Navigating the Future of Software” as well as to share his insights and experiences with the participants. CARD is an important annual event to share research achievement and promote collaboration among COMP research students, research personnel and staff members. We look forward to more prominent and innovative research in COMP. Awards Awardees Title of Proposal First Place LU Xingye HAN Lei YU Xinbo HOU Ningning Fin-eco: A Reliable, Efficient and Intelligent Finance Eco-system Second Place LI Yanran LI Zhe LU Zexin WANG Fang ZHANG Yinyan Humanoid Financial Assistant Robot Third Place HO Yik Him YIP Hiu Fai SIN Ping Tat Personal Expense Robo-Advisor  

ICMA workshop on Strategic Cost Management

Under the “Joint COMP/ ICMA Affiliate Membership Scheme”, ICMA offered a two-day workshop on “Strategic Cost Management” to COMP students on 2 – 3 June. Mr Melvin Beh, Executive Director of Malaysia Development of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants, Australia, who has over 20 years of international industrial and practical experience in management accounting, policies and standard operation procedures (“SOPs”) development, financial analysis and business modeling gained from different industries including logistics, sports and entertainment, information technology, and venture capital investment was invited as the workshop trainer. The course covered the complex modern industrial organizations within which various facets of decision-making and controlling operations take place and some major contemporary issues that have emerged in managerial accounting were also discussed. It brought new business insight to our computer science students and equipped them with more industrial knowledge in the business field.

PolyU JUPAS Consultation Day: Admissions Strategies 2018

PolyU JUPAS Consultation Day 2018 was successfully concluded at PolyU campus on 19 May. To provide admission strategies and more programme information to the JUPAS applicants, COMP arranged an Info Seminar on Broad Discipline of Computing, which attracted more than 130 participants. A series of Mini-Lectures themed on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Cyber Security, Virtual reality (VR) and Game Development were also organised. By the end of the day, a consultation session was held for applicants to interact with our academic staff and know more about the entrance requirements, curriculum and programme characteristics.

The fifth edition of Computer App Programming (CAP) Day

COMP and the Hong Kong Association for Computer Education (HKACE) jointly organised the fifth edition of Computer App Programming (CAP) Day at PolyU. CAP Day is an annual competition that targets at secondary school students, creating a great platform for them to develop computational and programming knowledge, enhance logical thinking skills, nurture creativity as well as increase team spirit. This year, the preliminary round of “Problem-solving Competition” was held on 11 May, attracted over 140 students from 23 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP met the students and gave them big encouragement. All participants had to complete a multiple-choice question paper about basic programming and logical thinking within an hour. The 100 students who scored the highest will enter the final of CAP Day held in July.