Events

Robot Wars

Date: 5th March 2016 Venue: EF402 Robot Wars - the first robotic competition organized by the Department was successfully conducted on 5-March. The 6 teams with students from different levels of study took part in the competition with robots designed and built by themselves. After the first round of the competition, 3 robots named Tiger, Fire Phoenix and Hell Boy, entered the second round and competed for the champion.  After the first three games in the second round, Hell Boy lost one of its gear during combat and failed to continue. It was a tie between Tiger and Fire Phoenix after five games and at the tie breaker, it was still not able to name a winner. After careful deliberation of the Judging Panel, Tiger won the final game as well as the Championship of the first Robot Wars, it was also selected by the Panel as the Best Engineered Robot.  The final results of the competition are: Champion: Tiger  First Runner Up: Fire Phoenix  Second Runner Up: Hell Boy Third Runner Up: Tankinbox Best Engineered Robot: Tiger

Our Warmest Welcome to all EE Freshmen!! A Gathering Party

Date: 3rd March 2016   On 3rd March 2016, the Department is pleased to have gathered over 60 freshmen from degree and HD programmes, academic & teaching staff as well as programme support staff for the captioned event. Our academic and teaching staff were invited to give a brief introduction of their backgrounds and research specialties.  A warm welcoming note by Professor Tam Hwa-yaw, Head of Department, was then followed.  To let our freshmen understand more about academic matters and campus life, Dr. Edward Lo, the Associate Head, and Dr YF Fung, Coordinator of various student activities updated and share with them especially on the areas of University’s policy on academic performance, academic advising, upcoming events and activities, scholarship and exchange opportunities.   This event gives a good opportunity for all of us to meet and mingle.  The Department anticipates the relationship between us could be strengthened.  We all wish our freshmen could enjoy their campus life with the University in the next 4 years.  

A Fruitful Sharing with EE non-local Students and Students with Exchange Experiences

Date: 2nd March 2016 Venue: EF402   Having a chance to study abroad even though the period may only last for one semester, students could benefit a lot from learning other countries’ culture and languages apart from the subjects they took.  It is great fun to meet friends and teachers who are from different backgrounds.  Having such a memorable experience is not simply beneficial to the students themselves, it can help improve our teaching and learning if there is a chance that we can share and learn from others’. The Department is eager to obtain feedback from students who have experienced overseas study as well as our non-local students.  We hope through this regular meeting, it can inspire us on how to improve the learning process for our students.  On 2nd March 2016, Professor Tam Hwa-Yaw, Head of Department led a group of staff to meet those students casually in our newly renovated Electrical Engineering Lab (EF402).   A light lunch was arranged and we all enjoyed the sharing under such relaxed atmosphere.  

Campus visit NTHYK Yuen Long District Secondary School

Date: 25th January 2016   On 25 January, our Department organized a half-day campus tour for 25 secondary students and their teacher from NTHYK Yuen Long District Secondary School (新界鄉議局元朗區中學).   Dr. Edward Lo, Associate Head of the Department, gave a briefing to visitors on the Department’s unique features and the admission criteria for our two undergraduate programmes.  The briefing session was followed by visits to our Specially Optical Fibre Fabrication Laboratory, Optical Communications and Networking Research Laboratory, University Research facility in materials Characterization and Device Fabrication as well as the solar cars that were designed and manufactured by students from various engineering departments. The students enjoyed the fun-filled demonstration  very much. At the end of the visit, students had a chance to participate in a fibre connection experiment.  It was a memorable experience for them.

Professor Jean Mahseredjian Departmental visit

The Department’s Overseas Academic Advisor, Professor Jean Mahserejian visited the Department on 1-2 February 2016.  To enhance Professor Mahseredjian to understand the Department more, Head of Department gave a briefing upon his arrival.  We have also arranged separate group meetings with Programme Leaders and essential lab visits during these two days.  At the end of his visit, Professor Mahseredjian shared with all our academic and teaching staff his observation in teaching and learning.  Several areas for improvement are also brought up for our follow up.  His sharing is inspiring and beneficial to all of us indeed!  

Study Tour to Chengdu - Southwest Jiaotong University

Date: 25 - 31 December 2015   40 students from both EE and TSE programs took part in the study tour organized by Southwest Jiaotong University supported by the [万人计划]  from 25 to 31 Dec 2015. The study tour includes various programs – lectures, visits and other cultural activities.

Research Seminar - Modelling and management of multi-modal urban traffic

Speaker: Dr. Andy Chow Date: 23rd December 2015 Time: 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Venue: FJ302, Hong Kong Polytechnic University   In this talk, we will be looking at modelling and management of urban traffic with consideration of interaction between public transport (buses) and surrounding traffic in an integrated multi-modal system. Traffic dynamics is represented by a macroscopic simulation framework based on the variational formulation of kinematic wave model. The modelling platform can capture shockwaves, dispersion of vehicle platoons, and impact of slow moving vehicles. Various dwell time control strategies are also implemented on this multi-modal modelling platform and their performance on regulating bus services are investigated. The simulation package is run over a range of numerical experiments, and applied to real world scenarios with data collected from Central London, UK. The results suggest that the model is able to produce reasonable estimates of traffic flows, journey times, and bus service performances. This study opens new research direction in multi-modal traffic modelling and management.

Campus visit Wa Ying College

Date: 30th October 2015   Having co-ordinated by the Office of Undergraduate Studies, the Department arranged a half-day visit for around 30 students and their teacher from Wa Ying College on 30 October 2015.  Dr. Edward Lo gave the students a brief introduction on the Department as well as our two flagship undergraduate programmes.  A lab tour was also arranged for them to visit our PolyU-KCRC Smart Railway Research Laboratory,  Specially Optical Fibre Fabrication Laboratory, Optical Communications and Networking Research Laboratory and University Research facility in materials Characterization and Device Fabrication.  The students are greatly impressed by the facilities and equipment there.  At the end of the visit, students were invited to participate in a competition which competes for the highest electricity record as generated by riding a bike.  They are amused by this competition and found this visit to the Department informative and interesting.

The 4th Workshop on Specialty Optical Fiber and Their Applications (WSOF2015)

Date: 4th - 6th November 2015 Venue: Hotel ICON   This is a technical workshop and exhibits on advances and innovations in the field of specialty optical fibers and their applications.  WSOF is the foremost research platform for sharing and discussion of research with industrial and academic leaders in specialty optical fibres. The Department organized it from 4-6 November 4-6 at Hotel ICON. The international event was attended by 134 participants who are virtually the leading experts in the field. We are glad to have invited Prof. Sir David N Payne from University of Southampton to give a Plenary Talk. Two renowned speakers, Prof. Yasuhiro Koike, Keio University and Prof. Nicolas Joly from Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany were also invited to give the Tutorials.

IEEE Photonics Society HK Chapter Seminar

Topic: Optical MIMO to Overcome the Optical Networks Capacity Crunch Speaker: Dr. Peter Winzer Head, Optical Transmission Systems and Networks Research Department Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ, USA Date: 20th November 2015 Time: 2:30 p.m. Venue: R1206, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University With network traffic growing exponentially between about 30% and 60% per year, depending on application segment and geography, fiber-optic transport networks are rapidly approaching their fundamental Shannon capacity limits. By 2020, leading-edge network operators will require capacities that are physically impossible to implement using conventional optical transmission technologies. Of all five physical dimensions that can be used for information transmission by electromagnetic waves, “space” is the one not yet exploited in optical systems. Introducing parallelism in the spatial domain (i.e., Space-Division Multiplexing, SDM) is thus the only long-term viable solution on the horizon to overcome the optical networks capacity crunch. In this talk we will examine long-term optical capacity scaling solutions using SDM. We will explore the implications of ultimately unavoidable spatial crosstalk and its mitigation through multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) digital signal processing. We will highlight important differences of optical MIMO with selective mode excitation and wireless MIMO systems. We will also discuss new avenues for high-throughput physical-layer security systems based on optical MIMO-SDM.