News

COMP x CAA Academic-Industry Seminar Series – Blockchain (Feb 2022)

Following the first seminar of the "COMP x CAA Academic-Industry Seminar Series" last October, the second seminar themed on “Blockchain” was held virtually on 16 February. More than one hundred students and alumni participated in the session. The seminar series is co-organised by COMP and the Computing Alumni Association (CAA). Blockchain technology can be extensively applied in many areas, from cryptocurrency, trading, NFT (Non-Fungible Token) to Metaverse. The blockchain system requires the mining process to generate new blocks, sustaining immutable transactions and data streams, yet there is the risk to be attacked. In particular, NFT has rapidly become one of the hot topics globally. In the seminar, Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head (Partnership & Collaboration) of COMP, delivered welcome remarks to the audience. Mr Darron Sun, President of CAA and Head of Information Technology of Hong Kong Housing Society, also gave a warm welcome. Prof. Bin Xiao, COMP Professor, then presented possible security attacks on blockchain systems, including mining attacks. He further talked about power adjusting withholding and Bribery Selfish Mining. On the other hand, Mr Dick Fong, Venture Leader of McKinsey & Company, at the same time an alumnus from COMP, represented CAA to be the second invited speaker to give an overview on NFTs and their latest development by illustrating various examples. He also generously shared his knowledge related to the blockchain with the audiences. There were in-depth discussions and fruitful interaction between the speakers and the participants during the Q&A session. To encourage lifelong learning, strengthen the connection between COMP and Alumni, as well as foster the possible collaboration between academia and industry, COMP and CAA kicked off the “COMP x CAA Academic-Industry Seminar Series” in the academic year of 2021/22. Various academics and industry professionals will be invited to share their insights and experiences on important computing topics.

Faculty of Engineering Research Grant Achievement Award 2020

We are proud to announce that our Professors, Prof. Song Guo, Prof. Wenjie Li and Prof. Bin Xiao, recently received the Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Research Grant Achievement Award for 2020 in recognition of their great efforts and contributions in securing external competitive research grants. Prof. Guo’s research interests are mainly in the areas of Big Data, Edge AI, Mobile Computing, and Distributed Systems. Prof. Li focuses on the research areas of Natural Language Processing, Text Mining, Social Media Analysis, Information Retrieval, Extraction and Summarization. Prof. Xiao conducts research on AI and Network Security, Data Privacy, Learning Model Security and Blockchain Systems development. All 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 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.

Prof. Guo received the Best Paper Award

Congratulations to our Professor, Prof. Song Guo, on receiving the 2020 Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Computers by the IEEE Computer Society Publications Board with his paper titled “A Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Offloading Game in Edge Computing”. Edge computing is a new paradigm to provide strong computing capability at the edge of pervasive radio access networks close to users. A critical research challenge of edge computing is to design an efficient offloading strategy to decide which tasks can be offloaded to edge servers with limited resources. Although many research efforts attempt to address this challenge, they need centralized control, which is not practical because users are rational individuals with interests to maximize their benefits. In this article, the design of a decentralized algorithm for computation offloading is studied, so that users can independently choose their offloading decisions. Game theory has been applied in algorithm design. Different from existing work, the challenge that users may refuse to expose their information about network bandwidth and preference is addressed. Prof. Guo is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Member and a Highly Cited Researcher in the Computer Science category for 2 consecutive years since 2020. With over 500 papers published in major conferences and journals, Prof. Guo’s work in cloud computing, edge artificial intelligence, big data and distributed systems has had a broad and seminal impact – from the advancement of scientific knowledge to industrial innovation. He has been widely recognised for his pioneering contributions to the resilient management system used in post-disaster applications.

Prof. Jiannong Cao named the Fellow of China Computer Federation

We are proud to announce that Prof. Jiannong Cao, Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science and Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing, has recently been named the Fellow of China Computer Federation (CCF), the leading organisation on computing technology and applications in China. With the outstanding achievements and contributions in distributed computing, wireless network and mobile computing and big data analysis, Prof. Cao was elected as one of the nine CCF Fellows this year. Prof. Cao has joined COMP since 1997. He has published more than 500 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings. He has also directed and participated in over 130 research and development projects. For his exceptional research efforts, Prof. Cao has also been named Fellow of IEEE, Distinguished Member of ACM, and a member of Academia Europaea. His research interests include distributed systems and blockchain, wireless sensing and networking, big data and machine learning, and mobile cloud and edge computing. The honour from CCF further reflects Prof. Cao’s outstanding accomplishments in the field of computer science for the advancement of public benefit. CCF Fellow Program was initiated in 2008 to recognise those members who have made outstanding achievements in the field of computer science or made exceptional contributions to CCF and have membership for more than five consecutive years. CCF Fellow is the highest level in the membership of CCF and currently, there are 150 CCF fellows, accounting for 0.32% of professional members. Congratulations to Prof. Cao on attaining this honour!

COMP Mentorship Programme 2021/22 virtual kick-off cum Career Talk

Starting from 2019/20, COMP has collaborated with the Computing Alumni Association (CAA) to launch the mentorship programme which aims to enhance students’ holistic learning experience. This year, we have invited 10 alumni who are professional practitioners and industry executives as our mentors. A virtual kick-off gathering cum career talk was held on 18 January. Dr Henry Chan, our Associate Professor and Associate Head (Partnership & Collaboration) delivered the welcome remarks and thanked mentors for their contribution and support. Mr Darron Sun, President of CAA and the Mentorship Coordinator greeted all participants and briefly introduced the mentorship programme. One of our mentors, Mr Tony Chung, Senior Vice President of Data Services from Asia Satellite Telecommunications, was the invited speaker to give a talk on “My Career Story”. At the end of his presentation, he summarised three important elements of career development: ‘dedication’, ‘enjoyment’ and ‘persistent’. We have also invited Mr Christopher Cheung and Mr Bosco Lin, representatives from BlackPine, to share a range of career and internship opportunities with the participants. Various breakout rooms were arranged for both mentees and mentors to have in-depth group discussions. Under the mentorship programme, each participating student is assigned to a mentor and group activities with other mentors will also be organised to promote cross-industry sharing. In other words, it offers reciprocal opportunities for mentees to know about workplace culture, business trends and prospects in established professions, widening their exposure to different career paths and options while at the same time for mentors to understand the career aspirations of the younger generation. Through mentor-mentee activities, we hope to encourage students to acquire skills in career planning and personal development as well as broaden their social networks.

CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Fund Scholar Reward Program

Jointly launched by Tencent and the China Computer Federation (CCF) in 2013, the CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund (the Fund) is committed to building a platform for industry-university research cooperation and academic exchanges for young scholars. A scholar reward program was established to further support scientific research cooperation and the personal development of scholars. We are glad to announce that two COMP scholars recently received awards under the Fund in recognition of their academic excellence during the collaboration and projects with achievements ready for commercialisation. Award Project Awardee 2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Fund - Cooperation Award Comment-Aware Weakly-Supervised Classification for Social Media Texts Dr Jing Li, Assistant Professor 2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Fund - Excellence Award Deep Program Synthesis Based Hardened Code Analysis Dr Lei Xue, Research Assistant Professor

PolyU Info Day for Taught Postgraduate Programmes

On 8 January 2022, COMP hosted an online info seminar to introduce the Master of Science in Information Technology (MScIT) programme during PolyU Info Day for Taught Postgraduate Programmes, attracting more than 150 participants. Dr Korris Chung, Associate Professor and MSc Scheme Coordinator began the seminar by briefly introducing the Department. He then shared the trend of hot IT topics including Artificial Intelligence and Big Data with the attendees while Dr Daniel Luo, Associate Professor, talked about the development of Financial Technology. Dr Ken Yiu, Associate Professor and MScIT Programme Leader, further illustrated the programme structure, subjects offered, study patterns, admission requirements, etc. In response to the rapid development of the global IT industry and the huge demand for AI and fintech talents, two streams are introduced in the MScIT programme: “Stream in AI and Big Data” and “Stream in AI and FinTech”. Students enjoy the flexibility to choose their specialisms based on their own career goals and study plan. With the extensive network of COMP MSc alumni, students can acquire both advanced expertise and professional networks that help them scale new heights in their careers. The seminar provided prospective students with an excellent opportunity to obtain first-hand information about our MSc programme and academic advice from COMP faculty members.

COMP PhD student won in the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2021

Under the supervision of Prof. Song Guo, Professor of COMP, our PhD student, Jackal Xu Zhenda received the Student Innovation (Tertiary or above) Gold Award and Student Innovation Grand Award with his project “Dr. Body-Scan” at the presentation ceremony of the Hong Kong Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Awards 2021 on 29 November. Jackal teamed up with a student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and worked on the project, “Dr. Body-Scan”, a professional medical infrared analyzer, tailored for 3D evaluation of scoliosis issues. It innovates from traditional X-rays, by using infrared imaging technology to perform 3D reconstruction and thermal imaging of the human back. Using AI technology, it locates the medical anatomical feature points of the human back automatically, while using the musculoskeletal model to process the 3D structures of big bones, such as backbones, for calculation, leading to a safe and reliable detection, close follow-up, long term analysis for non-surgical cases and assistance for rehabilitation projects of scoliosis and other bad postures. “Thank you COMP and my instructor, Prof. Guo for the support,” Jackal shared. “I hope ‘Dr. Body-Scan’ can first serve primary and secondary school students in Hong Kong from 2022, especially to help children and teenagers who may have abnormal spinal curvature.” The Hong Kong ICT Awards (the Awards) is an annual signature event in the local ICT industry, aiming to promote outstanding ICT inventions and applications. In addition to encouraging the winners and recognising their achievements, the Awards also help their products enter into the international markets.

COMP Project Launch Seminar - Hong Kong Stock Market: Review and Outlook

COMP recently received an ITF grant under the Partnership Research Programme for a Fintech-related project entitled: “An Innovative Hybrid Intelligence Web System for the Hong Kong Stock Market”. In collaboration with the Hong Kong Institute of Financial Analysts (HKIFA) and Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia (IFTA), this innovative project seeks to combine human intelligence and artificial intelligence (i.e. Hybrid Intelligence) for analysing the Hong Kong stock market. Supported by the industry partners, COMP organised a project launch seminar “Hong Kong Stock Market: Review and Outlook” on 20 December 2021. The seminar was attended by over a hundred practitioners and representatives from the industry as well as students and alumni. At the opening, Dr Miranda Lou, Executive Vice President of PolyU and Prof. Christopher Chao, Vice President (Research and Innovation) of PolyU greeted the audiences and delivered the welcome addresses respectively. We are also honoured to invite Mr Joseph Chan, JP, Under Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, The Government of the HKSAR, and Dr David Chung, JP, Under Secretary for Innovation and Technology, The Government of the HKSAR to be the distinguished guests. Dr Kenny Tang, Chairman of HKIFA and Mr Paul Pong, Chairman of IFTA were invited as guest speakers and gave a presentation on the Hong Kong Stock Market. Moderated by Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP, Dr Tang and Mr Pong exchanged their views about the Hong Kong Stock Market in 2021 from different perspectives. They also expressed their opinions and shared their insights such as forecasting the attractive sectors in the next year. At the end of the seminar, Dr Henry Chan (the project coordinator) further talked about the overview of the collaborative research and development project (i.e., “An Innovative Hybrid Intelligence Web System for the Hong Kong Stock Market”). Aiming for knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship as well, the project seeks to contribute to Hong Kong’s Fintech development. More photos are available on COMP Facebook page and COMP Instagram.

Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement 2021

Congratulations to the following staff members on receiving the Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement 2021. This truly reflects the great efforts and contributions made by them. Category of Award Award Awardee Faculty Award in Research and Scholarly Activities: Outstanding Researcher Outstanding Award Prof. Jiannong Cao, Chair Professor Faculty Award in Teaching Outstanding Award (Team) Dr Grace Ngai, Associate Professor Dr Peter Ng, Teaching Fellow (and colleagues from BME, EE, BEEE and SLLO) Faculty Award in Research and Scholarly Activities: Outstanding Young Researcher Merit Award Dr Lei Yang, Assistant Professor Faculty Award in Teaching Merit Award Dr Peter Ng, Teaching Fellow   The winners of the Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement are chosen by a Faculty Assessment Panel, comprising the Heads (or their delegates) and chaired by the Dean of Faculty of Engineering (FENG), from amongst a pool of well-qualified nominees put forward by individual departments under FENG. The selection is made with reference to the indicative criteria for assessment as laid down by the University for the exercise.