Issue 1

Department of Computing (COMP)

Welcome on board new Chair Professors

Prof. Changwen Chen, Chair Professor of Visual Computing, received his Ph.D. degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A. Before joining PolyU, he was an Empire Innovation Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, U.S.A. from 2008 to 2021. He also served as Dean of School of Science and Engineering and Presidential Chair Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen from 2017 to 2020. His research interests include Multimedia Communication, Internet of Video Things, Multimedia Systems, Image/Video Processing, Machine Learning, Multimedia Signal Processing, etc.

Prof. Kay Chen Tan, Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence, received his Ph.D. degree from University of Glasgow, U.K. Before joining PolyU, he was a Professor with the Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include Artificial/Computational Intelligence, Evolutionary Computation, Evolutionary Transfer and Machine Learning, Data Analytics and Multi-objective Optimization.

Distinguished Seminar Series on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence

We successfully launched the Distinguished Seminar Series on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, with the first one by Prof. Hussein Abbass on “Artificial Intelligence: The Pearls of the Knowledge Economy” on 25 March 2021.

It attracted over 320 attendees from PolyU, HKUST, CUHK, HKBU, as well as overseas institutions including the University of Canberra, University of New South Wales, Victoria University of Wellington, University of Exeter, University of Surrey, University of Waikato and RMIT University.

Computing (COMP) Mentorship Programme

Following the success of the trial run in 2018, we have introduced the COMP Mentorship Programme 2020/21 in collaboration with the Computing Alumni Association. It aims at allowing COMP students to seek professional advice from industrial mentors on personal and career development, and to gain an understanding of business practices, workplace culture, market trends and prospects in established professions. We hope to encourage our students to plan for their careers, acquire interpersonal skills and broaden their social networks through mentor-mentee interactions. The mentors are COMP BSc and MSc graduates coming from various sectors including IT, fintech, financial services, government, e-commerce, etc. In addition to promoting cross-industry inspiration, we take this opportunity to further strengthen the partnership between our alumni and create synergy among the COMP community.

Computing Student Competition Scheme (COS²)

Our teaching has been affected by the pandemic to a varying extent. Most of the classes are conducted online to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and the ways of communication are also adapted. To connect our students with the Department and their classmates, especially during the period of online teaching, we are undertaking to set up the Computing Student Competition Scheme (COS²) with different tracks to include educational, technical and industrial contests. By motivating and engaging students in teamwork, the Scheme is expected to elevate their sense of belonging, self-confidence, soft skills and technical competency. The experiences gained in out-of-classroom activities also enrich the students’ profile for job hunting when they graduate.