PolyU-Huawei Innovation(PHI) Partnership Series: Artificial Intelligence Bootcamp Advanced Training

Deep learning has become a popular emerging technology in recent years. Many university students are eager to equip themselves with such knowledge and skills in order to capture the opportunities brought about by the development of innovation and technology in various industries. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Huawei jointly organised an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bootcamp in late April to share the latest developments of leading technologies such as digitalisation, machine learning and deep learning. Participants exchanged views on how to integrate digital technologies into different disciplines and facilitate interdisciplinary learning at local universities in order to create a “digital + talent” ecosystem.

In the bootcamp, participants got hands-on experience through the use of Huawei Ascend series products for different deep learning model training and reasoning experiments, including image classification, object detection, and mask wearing detection. Moreover, Huawei Cloud’s ModelArts, a one-stop model automatic learning platform, can also be used for model training where the trained deep learning model will be converted to Atlas development kit to complete the inference process.

Professor Daniel Shek, Interim Vice President (Research and Innovation) and Associate Vice President (Undergraduate Programme) of PolyU, said, “The cooperation between PolyU and Huawei in research development has been ongoing since 2007. In the past few years, we have advanced a variety of innovative technologies in different fields, including optical communications, microwave communications, big data, crowdsourcing platforms, wireless network surveying as well as automatic navigation, that pioneered the development of information and communication technology (ICT). Leveraging the innovative research applications of PolyU and the industry-leading competitiveness of Huawei, the bootcamp aimed to develop those AI systems that support impactful research with the ultimate goal of benefitting society with technologically advanced applications.”

Professor Daniel Lau, Head of Applied Physics of PolyU, said, “Physics and AI are mutually related. While Physics helps formulate better AI models, AI can solve complicated Physics problems more efficiently, resulting in more new discoveries.”

Mr Denny Deng, General Manager of Huawei’s Hong Kong Representative Office, said, “Talent is one of the cores that supports the development of the digital industry, and universities are the base for talent cultivation. Huawei is honoured to cooperate with PolyU in deepening the integration among industry, academia and research sectors to nurture talent to meet industry needs. We aim to foster the development of smart industries and support digitalisation in different industries by building a local ‘digital + talent’ ecosystem.”

Various departments of PolyU, including the Department of Building and Real Estate, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Department of Health Technology and Informatics, have worked together with Huawei on a number of research projects on digitalisation with different scopes such as activity tracking on construction sites, object lifting function of robotic arms, and medical imaging analysis. In addition, some PolyU professors and researchers have also attended the “Huawei Certified ICT Associate - Artificial Intelligence (HCIA-AI)” training course offered by Huawei in late 2020.

PolyU will continue collaborative research in AI-related disciplines with Huawei, which has been providing invaluable advice and support to the University. PolyU believes the joint efforts in offering professional training and establishing innovation laboratories will help nurture digitalisation and AI talent and develop more impactful technologies and applications for the development of the local technology ecosystem.