News

Outstanding Student Award 2017

The Outstanding Students Award Scheme is one of the most prestigious award schemes in PolyU which is set up to recognise high achievers. We are glad to announce that our final year student of BSc (Hons) in Computing, Mr Xiating Ouyang, was awarded with the “Outstanding Student Award of Department” for his excellent academic performance, good personal qualities and active involvement in extra-curricular activities. With exceptional outstanding academic achievement, Mr Ouyang has been on the Dean’s Honours List in 2014/15 and ranked first in his cohort for the past 3 years. He also received numerous competitive scholarships throughout his study at PolyU. As the Internal Vice President (2016) of Exploring Hong Kong Community, Mr Ouyang demonstrated strong leadership skills and capability in organizing activities for exchange students. His proactive participation in competitions, international exchange programmes to MIT in USA and University of Waterloo in Canada, and research work further equipped him to be an all-rounder. On 26 February, Prof. Timothy Tong, President of PolyU officiated the Outstanding Student Awards Presentation Ceremony and presented the Certificate of Award to the top undergraduate students who excel in both academic and non-academic pursuits. Congratulations to Mr Ouyang on receiving this honour.

Global Game Jam 2018

We are glad to announce that the PolyU team consisted of students from Department of Computing (COMP) and School of Design (SD) was awarded the “Future Game Developer” with their VR game “Love in the Game Jam” in the Global Game Jam Hong Kong site (GGJ HK) 2018. The Global Game Jam (GGJ) was held on 26 – 28 January. This year, over 42 thousand jammers from 804 jam sites located in 109 countries participated. The GGJ allows jammers to get together in their respective regions, form teams and develop games in the time span of 48 hours under a global theme announced on-site. The GGJ HK was organised by Cyberport and SD of PolyU, attracting 339 jammers to create 59 games at Cyberport. It was the sixth biggest among all locations worldwide. “Love in the Game Jam” is a VR game for which players have to match couples with Cupid’s arrows within limited time. Our students demonstrated strong team spirit and programming skills during the game development cycle from ideation, testing to implementation. The organiser presented award to the best team in each of the nine categories.   Team Members Department Programme Lee Kiu Lun, Isaac COMP BSc (Hons) Information Technology Chan Sing Kam COMP BSc (Hons) Information Technology Li Tsz Fung COMP BSc (Hons) Information Technology Leung Shek Hin COMP BSc (Hons) Information Technology Lee Kwok Shing, Victor SD MSc in Multimedia and Entertainment Technology Tian Yuan, Finnik SD MSc in Multimedia and Entertainment Technology Wong Nicholas Nick Heng SD MSc in Multimedia and Entertainment Technology

Faculty External Grants Achievement Awards 2016

We are pleased to announce that Dr Yixin Cao, Assistant Professor of COMP, received the Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Research Grant Achievement Award 2016. Since 2003, the Faculty Research Committee has set up FENG Research Grant Achievement Award and FENG Industrial and Engineering Services Grant Achievement Award in recognition of the outstanding performance of FENG academic staff members in securing external research grants. To be qualified, a staff member must successfully secure 3 external competitive research grants in 36 months or 4 external competitive research grants in 60 months, as Principal Investigator/ co-Principal Investigator. Dr Cao has secured 4 external research grants in 36 months since he joined PolyU in 2014. Congratulations to Dr Cao for his achievement!   Year Funding Scheme Project Title Funding Awarded 1 2017/18 RGC General Research Fund Super-Polynomial Approximation of Graph Problems HKD700,000 2 2016/17 RGC General Research Fund Graph Algorithms Based on Modular Decomposition HKD675,647 3 2015/16 RGC Early Career Scheme Efficient Algorithms for Graph Modification Problems HKD726,075 4 2015/16 NSFC 圈結構及其演算法研究 RMB787,000

Unity Training/Certification Programme

To provide diversified learning opportunities to students from time to time, COMP collaborates with various well-known corporations in the IT industry in order to strengthen students' practical skills and enhance their employability in this modern digital era. On 19 January, Mr Marek Marchlewicz, Unity Evangelist from Unity Shanghai, came to PolyU to deliver a special training session introducing the latest Unity technologies about Cinemachine and fluid simulation. Recently, COMP launched a five-month Unity Training/Certification Programme with the aim of assisting students to prepare for the Unity Certified Developer examination in June. It is currently the only professional certification in the games industry. To get certified, candidates have to pass a rigorous test of technical and problem solving skills designed by specialists and experts from the games, 3D and interactive industries. The training programme includes workshops as well as intensive revisions and exercises by different trainers and game developers. It will help to enhance students’ programming skills in general. Previous candidates are also invited to share their experience. Having such certification allows students to demonstrate their applied knowledge, foundational game design and technical programming skills that meet the industry standards and facilitates their career development in the games industry. In addition to the technical training, we also invited a COMP alumnus to share his story of running a game start-up and representative from Tencent to talk about the prospect of the games industry. We hope that the students will understand what options are available and how to plan for their career after attaining the certification. Unity Technologies offers a platform for creating attractive and engaging 2D, 3D, VR, and AR games and apps. The Unity game engine is one of the most popular game development engines used in the market.

Seminar on "How does Microsoft respond to cyber attack?"

COMP organised a seminar on "How does Microsoft respond to cyber attack?” at PolyU on 3 February. Mr Barry Kong, Analyst, Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) of Microsoft Hong Kong was invited to share the insights on cyber security, new trends in cyber attack and how DCU partners with law enforcement globally to investigate and take action against ransomware infection. DCU is a special unit within Microsoft comprising of an international team of attorneys, analysts, investigators, data scientists, engineers and business professionals based in 30 countries, who work together and collaborate with law enforcements and stakeholders, to transform the ongoing fight against digital crime and global malware, reduce digital risk, and protect the general public. Mr Kong is also the Gold Award Winner of the Cyber Security Professionals Awards (CSPA) in 2017 and has deep knowledge and experience in cyber forensics and malware analysis, incident response, and other cyber security related technical topics.

Joint COMP/ICMA Affiliate Membership Scheme

COMP and the Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA) collaborate to establish the “Joint COMP/ICMA Affiliate Membership Scheme”, offering our students with free courses in strategic business analysis and strategic cost management, mentorship programme, internship referrals, networking opportunities, and free affiliate membership. Prof. Allen Wong, the Senior Vice President - Global and Founding President of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants - Hong Kong Office was invited to introduce the requirements, competitive advantages of CMA programme, as well as the roadmap to become a certified management accountant, and members’ benefits to COMP students on 1 February. ICMA was officially incorporated in 1996 in Australia which aims to provide local prospective and practicing management accountants with the opportunity to attain the highly-regarded CMA professional qualification, whilst providing members with a wide range of professional development workshops and seminars on management accounting and current business topics. At present, there are 17 regional/ branch offices serving over 10,000 professional members over the world.

Long Service Award 2017

PolyU Long Service Award scheme has been introduced since 1990 to foster a sense of belonging among PolyU staff members. This year, two COMP staff members were awarded in appreciation of their loyal service to the University over the years. On 31 January, Prof. Jiannong Cao, Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing and Director of University Research Facility in Big Data Analytics, and Dr Grace Ngai, Associate Professor of COMP and Associate Head of Office of Service-Learning, received the awards from Prof. Timothy Tong, President of PolyU, at the presentation ceremony. The ceremony provided a warm gathering for the long-serving staff and an opportunity for the University to publicly acknowledge their years of dedicated service.

Visit to Cyberport Smart-Space FinTech

Beyond classroom teaching, we offered students a taste of “FinTech” by hosting an out-of-the-classroom activity on 31 January. Led by Dr Henry Chan and Dr Dorothy Chau, a group of COMP students made a visit to Cyberport Smart-Space FinTech. Mr Charles Lam, Manager, Partners Team of Cyberport welcomed the group by giving a guided tour to the Smart-Space facilities. That afternoon, representatives from FinTech start-ups were invited to share their experiences with the students. Mr William Lau, Manager of Business Development, Entrepreneurs Team of Cyberport also met the group and introduced their support to entrepreneurship through the Cyberport Incubation Programme. We sincerely thank Cyberport for organising the visit for COMP. Cyberport Smart-Space is one of the largest innovation and technology co-working spaces in Hong Kong which provides flexible work spaces for local start-ups and overseas companies who are looking to scale their business in mainland China and other parts of Asia. Currently, it houses hundreds of companies with diverse business natures, including e-Commerce, IT consultancy, digital marketing and FinTech.

Programming contest for junior students

To provide COMP junior students with more hands-on experiences in programming and enhance their skills and competitiveness, we organised a programming contest for Year 1 and Year 2 students on 27 January at PolyU. Students had to solve as many programming problems as possible within the 3-hour contest. The top three winners were: #1 CHENG Mingrui; #2 LIAO Zhengyun; #3 WU Feijie.

Workshop on Intelligent Chatbot and Scenario Based IoT Solutions Development

To enhance COMP students’ learning experience, a series of extra-curricular training activities will be organised this semester. In mid-January, two thematic workshops were held for COMP Year 2 to Year 4 students, providing them with an overview of application development in enterprise environment and hands-on experience in developing IoT applications with Microsoft Azure Platform. A number of industry experts from Microsoft, Quantr, Buzz IT and AgilePoint were invited to be the trainers and speakers. On 11 January, we hosted an “Intelligent Chatbot Workshop” in which students could acquire practical knowledge of AI, IoT and big data driven solutions and they also had a chance to develop an intelligent chatbot empowered by AgilePoint. Another workshop “Scenario Based IoT Solutions Development” was organised in the same week. Topics related to IoT infrastructure in the market, IoT applications, as well as the design and deployment of predictive maintenance apps were included. The Department aims at providing quality education and we will continue to enrich students’ study context through a variety of teaching and learning activities.