CBS PhD Student Achieves Top Honours in the 49th Hong Kong Youth Translation Competition

Our PhD student, Ms Hui Ka-yee Ruby, from the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies has achieved remarkable success in the 49th Hong Kong Youth Translation Competition (第49屆全港青年翻譯比賽). Ruby was awarded the champion titles for both English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation in the Open Category. In addition to our student’s individual achievements, PolyU received the Best Performance School Award. This competition, co-organised by the Hong Kong Youth Cultural and Arts Competitions, the Society of Chinese Accountants and Auditors, and the Hong Kong Translation Society, is sponsored by the HKSAR Home Affairs Department and is regarded as the most prestigious translation competition in Hong Kong. It includes sections for Open, Senior Secondary, and Junior Secondary categories.

FH Sets New Record with 18 GRF Projects Funded and Secures Over 11M in Funding

The Faculty has achieved a remarkable milestone this year, with 18 projects successfully receiving the General Research Fund (GRF), breaking the Faculty’s previous record. The funded projects span across our Departments, with nine from CBS, five from CHC, and four from ENGL. The total funding amount awarded exceeds HK$11 million, highlighting our commitment to advancing research and academic excellence. Additionally, the Early Career Scheme (ECS) have funded two projects from CBS and CHC of the FH Departments. Under the Research Grants Council, GRF aims to supplement universities’ research support to researchers who have achieved or have the potential to achieve excellence. The ECS, introduced in 2012/13, is intended to nurture junior academics. The assessment criteria include the scientific and scholarly merit of the proposal, originality, potential for social, cultural or economic application, and more. 

PolyU Students Win Awards in the Mainland-Hong Kong-Macau University Students’ Chinese Classics Recital Show 2024

The Mainland-Hong Kong-Macau University Students’ Chinese Classics Recital Show 2024 (2024年港澳及內地大專院校大學生中華經典誦讀交流展演), co-organised by Jiangsu Normal University, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the University of Macau, was successfully held on 14 June 2024. Over 350 entries were received and 30 of them from 19 institutes were shortlisted for the Recital Show. Five PolyU students participated in the event and one of them was awarded the Best Recitation Award (最佳朗讀作品獎) while the others received the Classic Splendour Award (古韻華彩獎), the Young Brilliance Award (青年風彩獎) and the New Fashion Award (時代新風獎).

Faculty Dean Prof. Li Ping Joins the Hangzhou-Hong Kong Collaborative Innovation Conference, Sharing Insights on PolyU Research in Hangzhou

Our Faculty Dean and Sin Wai Kin Foundation Professor in Humanities and Technology Prof. Li Ping participated in the Hangzhou-Hong Kong Collaborative Innovation Conference on 21 June, sharing insights about the model set by PolyU for such between-city collaborations. At the conference Prof. Li provided details on the establishment and operation of the PolyU-Hangzhou Technology and Innovation Research Institute. The conference was organised by the Hang Shi Cooperation and joined by a delegation of global representatives led by Executive Director Margaret Fong of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. The University and the Hangzhou Gongshu District People’s Government signed an agreement to promote collaboration through the PolyU-Hangzhou Technology and Innovation Research Institute in 2023.

ENGL Students Triumph in 2nd FH Three Minute Thesis Competition

The Faculty hosted its 2nd Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition on 12 June, showcasing the research prowess of our PhD students. The event challenged participants to present their complex research projects in just three minutes, emphasising clarity, conciseness, and effective communication. The winners are as follows: Champion: CHEN Zhuoan (ENGL) First runner-up: GANAAH John (ENGL) Second runner-up: GU Chanyuan (CBS) The 3MT Competition, developed by the University of Queensland, is an academic competition that challenges postgraduate students to present their research in just three minutes, using one static slide. The competition aims to develop students’ communication and presentation skills, particularly in research communication. These winners will now represent the Faculty in the University-wide 3MT competition (semifinal) scheduled for 24 June. Stay tuned for more updates as our champions prepare to compete at the next level!

MABCC Graduate Named in Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2024

Our MABCC graduate, Ms Emma Yu Sin-wan, who co-founded the inspiring social enterprise Dress Green has been named in the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list for 2024. Within an impressive timeframe of just three years following its launch in 2021, the start-up has successfully rescued approximately 3,000 old uniforms and upcycled them into a diverse range of over 4,000 products, including accessories, bags, and hats. Notably, the social enterprise has made a sustainable impact by providing more than 3,500 working hours to support local women and disadvantaged groups, actively contributing to the creation of a sustainable future for our society. Read more about Ms Yu: https://polyu.hk/FeJaO

Secretary for Labour and Welfare Visits Speech Therapy Unit and Speech and Language Sciences Laboratory

A delegation led by Mr Chris Sun, Secretary for Labour and Welfare, paid a visit to PolyU on 3 June 2024. The delegation toured the PolyU Speech Therapy Unit and the Speech and Language Sciences Laboratory, where they learned about PolyU’s advanced facilities, research initiatives, and educational programmes in relation to Speech Therapy. They also gained insights into the University's efforts in nurturing future-ready multidisciplinary professionals who can effectively put theory into practice. During the visit, PolyU President Prof. Jin-Guang Teng, Executive Vice President Dr Miranda Lou, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities Prof. Li Ping, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences Prof. David Shum, and other faculty members from the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, shared PolyU’s latest developments in education, research and innovation.

PolyU Research Finds Improving AI Large Language Models Helps Better Align with Human Brain Activity

With generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) transforming the social interaction landscape in recent years, large language models (LLMs), which use deep-learning algorithms to train GenAI platforms to process language, have been put in the spotlight. A recent study by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) found that LLMs perform more like the human brain when being trained in more similar ways as humans process language, which has brought important insights to brain studies and the development of AI models. Current large language models (LLMs) mostly rely on a single type of pretraining - contextual word prediction. This simple learning strategy has achieved surprising success when combined with massive training data and model parameters, as shown by popular LLMs such as ChatGPT. Recent studies also suggest that word prediction in LLMs can serve as a plausible model for how humans process language. However, humans do not simply predict the next word but also integrate high-level information in natural language comprehension. A research team led by Prof. LI Ping, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Sin Wai Kin Foundation Professor in Humanities and Technology at PolyU, has investigated the next sentence prediction (NSP) task, which simulates one central process of discourse-level comprehension in the human brain to evaluate if a pair of sentences is coherent, into model pretraining and examined the correlation between the model’s data and brain activation. The study has been recently published in the academic journal Sciences Advances. The research team trained two models, one with NSP enhancement and the other without, both also learned word prediction. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were collected from people reading connected sentences or disconnected sentences. The research team examined how closely the patterns from each model matched up with the brain patterns from the fMRI brain data. It was clear that training with NSP provided benefits. The model with NSP matched human brain activity in multiple areas much better than the model trained only on word prediction. Its mechanism also nicely maps onto established neural models of human discourse comprehension. The results gave new insights into how our brains process full discourse such as conversations. For example, parts of the right side of the brain, not just the left, helped understand longer discourse. The model trained with NSP could also better predict how fast someone read - showing that simulating discourse comprehension through NSP helped AI understand humans better. Recent LLMs, including ChatGPT, have relied on vastly increasing the training data and model size to achieve better performance. Prof. LI Ping said, “There are limitations in just relying on such scaling. Advances should also be aimed at making the models more efficient, relying on less rather than more data. Our findings suggest that diverse learning tasks such as NSP can improve LLMs to be more human-like and potentially closer to human intelligence.” He added, “More importantly, the findings show how neurocognitive researchers can leverage LLMs to study higher-level language mechanisms of our brain. They also promote interaction and collaboration between researchers in the fields of AI and neurocognition, which will lead to future studies on AI-informed brain studies as well as brain-inspired AI.”

Research on Migrant Domestic Helpers’ Healthcare and Communication Challenges in Hong Kong Spotlighted in Local Newspaper

Research on the health and other structural issues faced by migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, conducted by Prof. Hans Ladegaard, Dr Jeffry Oktavianus and Dr Margo Turnbull of our Department of English and Communication is featured in a local newspaper. The researchers have interviewed more than 700 Filipino and Indonesian migrant domestic workers and surveyed more than 400 to investigate their life stories and well-being in Hong Kong, covering topics from narratives about their (traumatic) experiences, health literacy and healthcare needs to their communication networks. In view of the increasing number of workers driven by growing demand for domestic elderly care in Hong Kong, these studies aimed to highlight the significance of cultivating favourable conditions for workers. In light of the structural issues uncovered by the studies, a symposium, Migrant Worker Lives Matter, organised by ENGL in collaboration with two local migrant worker NGOs, PathFinders and Mission for Migrant Workers, will be held at the PolyU campus this Friday (24 May): Venue: Room N002, PolyU Main Campus Time: 24 May 2024, 2:00pm-6:15pm The event is free of charge and is open to public. Click HERE for the programme flyer and registration. Click HERE to read the full press release.

International Symposium on Language Sciences (ISLS) 2024 Successfully Held

The Faculty of Humanities, in collaboration with the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies and the Department of English and Communication, organised the International Symposium on Language Sciences (ISLS): Interdisciplinary Research and the Legacy of Yuen Ren Chao from 10 May to 11 May 2024. The Symposium attracted about 180 participants from 14 countries and regions, including Hong Kong, India, Japan, Macau, Mainland China, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Netherlands, the Philippines, the UK, and the USA. Renowned scholars (in alphabetical order of surname) Prof. Cui Xiliang (Beijing Language and Culture University), Prof. Luke Kang Kwong Kapathy (Nanyang Technological University), Prof. Sun Chaofen (Stanford University) and Prof. Ovid Jyh-Lang Tzeng (Academia Sinica) were invited as keynote speakers. The Symposium featured nearly 20 panels of parallel presentations and poster sessions, as well as six invited presentations covering a wide range of topics in language sciences. Paying tribute to the remarkable contributions of Prof. Yuen Ren Chao, there was also a session dedicated to discussing Prof. Chao’s contribution to linguistics and language sciences. The two 2024 Chao Prize Laureates, Prof. Peter Hagoort and Prof. William Shiyuan Wang gave their Chao Prize Lectures at the Symposium. The Symposium not only fostered the exploration of novel concepts and the sharing of research findings in the fields of linguistics and language sciences, but also inspired future generations of linguists and language science researchers to continue advancing these fields. Prior to the Symposium, a related Young Scholar Forum on Language Neuroscience was also held by the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies.