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Under the signed Memorandum of Understanding in October 2017, PolyU, Monash University and CollinStar Capital joined efforts to develop blockchain and cryptocurrency research and enhance both privacy and security in the post-quantum computing by establishing the first university-industry joint research laboratory on blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies in Hong Kong.

On 26 March 2018, an opening ceremony of the joint lab was organised at PolyU. Dr David Chung, JP, Under Secretary for Innovation and Technology and Mr Tim Dillon, Commissioner - Greater China, State Government of Victoria Australia officiated the ceremony as Guests of Honour. Ir Prof. Alex Wai, Vice President (Research Development) represented PolyU to speak at the opening.

The PolyU-Monash University-CollinStar Capital Joint Lab aims to improve security and privacy for blockchain and cryptocurrencies and ultimately make the cyberspace safer, more convenient and effective for business and financial services in a decentralised and transparent manner.

Officiating guests: Dr David Chung, JP, Under Secretary for Innovation and Technology (fourth from left); Ir Prof. Alex Wai, Vice President (Research Development) of PolyU (fifth from left); Prof. Mark Wallace, Deputy Dean (Research) of Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University (fifth from right); Mr Tim Dillon, Commissioner - Greater China, State Government of Victoria Australia (fourth from right)

Other distinguished guests included Prof. Mark Wallace, Deputy Dean (Research), Faculty of Information Technology of Monash University and Mr Jacob Cheng, Managing Director of CollinStar Capital. Dr Allen Au, Director of Blockchain Lab and Assistant Professor of COMP together with Dr Joseph Liu, Director of Blockchain Lab at Monash University also shared the latest updates of blockchain technology.

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PolyU-Monash University-CollinStar Capital Joint Lab on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Technologies

A u g 2 0 1 8C O M P N e w s l e t t e r

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Staff Awards and Achievements

Organised by PolyU Technology and Consultancy Company Limited (PTeC), the presentation ceremony of Outstanding Professional Services Awards was held on 2 March 2018 at Hotel ICON. We are delighted to share with you the good news that COMP received a Merit Award of Highest Growth in recognition of COMP as the second highest ranking department in terms of i) absolute growth in total invoiced value and ii) percentage of growth compare to the previous financial year.

A number of COMP staff members also received various Outstanding Professional Services Awards in honour of their efforts devoted to consultancy activities.

PTeC is the strategic professional service arm of PolyU that provides one-stop consultancy and technology transfer services to business sectors, government institutions and non-profit making organisations. The Outstanding Professional Services Awards are administered by PTeC to honour departments and staff members in consultancy and licensing activities.

Prof. Qin Lu, Professor & Interim Head of COMP (left) and Dr Miranda Lou, Executive Vice President of PolyU (right)

Prof. Jiannong Cao, Chair Professor of COMP (third from right); Dr Dorothy Chau, Teaching Fellow of COMP (second from left) and Dr Vincent Ng, Associate Professor of COMP (third from left) received awards from Ir Prof. Alex Wai, Vice President (Research Development) of PolyU (middle)

Ir Prof. Alex Wai, Vice President (Research Development) of PolyU (third from right) together with Prof. Jiannong Cao, Chair Professor of COMP (third from left) and his research team

PTeC’s Outstanding Professional Services Awards 2017

Category Award Project Title Awardee/ Awarding Department

Departmental Award

Highest Growth (Merit) –– COMP

Individual Award Highest Growth Consultant (Winner)

–– Prof. Qin Lu, Professor & Interim Head

Team Award Highest International/ Non-local Consultancy (Winner)

AI3 - A Layered-Federation Information Sharing Architecture

Prof. Jiannong Cao, Chair Professor and his research team

Team Award Most Valued Project (Winner) Provision of Electronic Data Submission Consultancy Services

Prof. Jiannong Cao, Chair ProfessorDr Dorothy Chau, Teaching Fellow Dr Vincent Ng, Associate Professor (Project Leader)

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Dr Yixin Cao, Assistant Professor of COMP (middle)

Congratulations to COMP staff members on receiving three Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Awards 2016/17, including Merit Award in Teaching (Individual), Merit Award in Research and Scholarly Activities (Individual) and Research Grant Achievement Award in recognition of their excellent performance and achievements.

On 9 March 2018, FENG organised the Engineering Spring Reception cum Faculty Awards Presentation Ceremony, inviting faculty members and industry guests to share the joy together.

COMP has won the Faculty Awards for eleven consecutive years since 2006/07. It reflects the great effort and contributions made by our staff members. We look forward to more great accomplishments in the future.

Dr Peter Ng, Teaching Fellow of COMP (middle)

Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor and Associate Head of COMP, was presented with The Best Partner Award in Alibaba-Academic Collaboration at the Alibaba Annual Research Collaboration Summit on 21 April 2018, in recognition of his contribution in building up solid collaborative research with Alibaba AI central R&D organisation where the technology developed was successfully applied in Alibaba’s “City Brain” Initiatives. We look forward to more great achievements in the future.

Best Partner Award from Alibaba Group

Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor and Associate Head of COMP

Prof. Zhang was presented with The Best Partner Award

Faculty of Engineering Awards 2016/17

Award Awardee

Research Grant Achievement Award Dr Yixin Cao, Assistant Professor

Faculty Merit Award in Research and Scholarly Activities (Individual) Dr Ajay Kumar, Associate Professor

Faculty Merit Award in Teaching (Individual) Dr Peter Ng, Teaching Fellow

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We are proud to announce that two of our academics, Dr Korris Chung, Associate Professor and Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor and Associate Head, who were involved in two different research projects, received the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) from the Ministry of Education on 14 April 2018 to honour their contributions and discoveries made in natural science.

Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) 2017

Award Project Title Awardee

Second-class Award in Natural Science 神經模糊系統建模中的聚類、知識利用和學習方法

Dr Korris Chung, Associate Professor

First-class Award in Natural Science 視覺信息的表示學習理論與方法 Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor & Associate Head

Congratulations! Dr Daniel Luo, Assistant Professor of COMP and his research team received a Best Paper Award at IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) 2018 for their paper titled “Understanding Ethereum via Graph Analysis”.

Being the largest blockchain with the capability of executing smart contracts, Ethereum has attracted wide attention, and its market capitalisation has reached USD56 billion. Moreover, around 600K smart contracts have been deployed to Ethereum. Unfortunately, little is known about the characteristics of its users, smart contracts, and the relationships among them. In this paper, Dr Luo and his research team conducted the first systematic study on Ethereum by leveraging graph analysis to characterise three major activities on Ethereum, namely money transfer, smart contract creation, and smart contract invocation. A new approach was designed to collect all transaction data, and some new observations were discovered. New approaches were also proposed based on cross-graph analysis to address two security issues in Ethereum.

IEEE INFOCOM is a top-ranked conference on networking in the research community. It solicits research papers describing significant and innovative research contributions to the field of computer and data communications networks. Out of 1606 submissions this year, only three papers were selected as the best papers.

Best Paper Award at INFOCOM 2018

Dr Korris Chung, Associate Professor of COMP (right) Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor & Associate Head of COMP (right)

Dr Daniel Luo,Assistant Professor of COMP

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COMP acaedmic staff members receive research grants for their research projects from time to time; we look forward to more good news ahead.

February to July 2018

Project/ Research Topic Project Leader Funds Awarded

Funding Scheme/ Source

Big Data-Driven Airport Resources Management (BigARM) Engine and Application Tools

Prof. Jiannong Cao,Chair Professor

HKD4,618,400 Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF)

HKD1,975,912 An industry sponsorship

Data Aware Task Allocation for Collaborative Edge Computing Prof. Jiannong Cao,Chair Professor

HKD693,000 General Research Fund

Middleware for Distributed Control and Coordination of Robot Networks

Prof. Jiannong Cao,Chair Professor

RMB500,000 Shenzhen Basic Research Funding Scheme 2018

Building Real-Time Systems with OpenMP: Modeling, Analysis and Design

Dr Nan Guan, Assistant Professor


Task Scheduling of Multi-platform Computing Resources in Mobile Crowdsourcing Networks

Prof. Song Guo, Professor RMB300,000 Shenzhen Basic Research Funding Scheme 2018

Towards Emotion-Enhanced Social Conversation Machines Dr Wenjie Maggie Li, Associate Professor


Vetting the Security of Appified Bare-Metal IoT Systems Dr Xiapu Daniel Luo, Assistant Professor


Optimizing Storage System Design for Spatial-Temporal Big Data Prof. Zili Shao, Professor HKD490,400 General Research Fund

Designs of Oracles for Control-CPS Software Bug Localization Dr Qixin Wang, Associate Professor


A New Approach to Inspect Mechanical Vibrations Using Backscatter Signals

Dr Lei Yang, Research Assistant Professor

RMB300,000 Shenzhen Basic Research Funding Scheme 2018

Learning Knowledge Driven Deep Models for Complex Visual Enhancement with Small Data

Prof. Lei Zhang, Chair Professor & Associate Head


COMP Research Grant Achievement

We are pleased to announce that our Associate Professor Dr Dan Wang and his research team received a Best Paper Award at the ninth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (ACM e-Energy) held in Germany from 12 - 15 June, for the paper titled “Data Driven Chiller Sequencing for Reducing HVAC Electricity Consumption in Commercial Buildings”.

This paper presents a data-driven platform that can substantially improve the efficiency of HVAC operations. Dr Dan Wang, Associate Professor of COMP (left)

Best Paper Award at ACM e-Energy 2018

The core insight is to analyse the HVAC performance in run-time, so as to control HVAC operations in fine-granularity. This paper lands the general industry AIOps concept with one specific case in HVAC industry. The evaluation uses data from One, Two and Three Pacific Place at Admiralty and shows a potential annual cost saving of HKD2.7 million.

ACM e-Energy aims to be the premier venue for researchers working in the broad areas of computing and communication for smart energy systems (including the smart grid), and in energy-efficient computing and communication systems. By bringing together researchers in a high-quality single-track conference with significant opportunities for individual and small-group interaction, it serves as a major forum for presentations and discussions that will shape the future of this area.

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Student’s Awards and Achievements

Outstanding Student Award 2017 The Outstanding Students Award Scheme is one of the most prestigious award schemes in PolyU which is set up to recognise high achievers. We are glad to announce that our final year student of BSc (Hons) in Computing, Mr Xiating Ouyang, was awarded the “Outstanding Student Award of Department” for his excellent academic performance, good personal qualities and active involvement in extra-curricular activities.

With outstanding academic achievement, Mr Ouyang has been on the Dean’s Honours List in 2014/15 and ranked first in his cohort for the past three years. He also received numerous competitive scholarships throughout his study at PolyU. As the Internal Vice President (2016) of Exploring Hong Kong Community, Mr Ouyang demonstrated strong leadership skills and capability in organising activities for exchange students. His proactive participation in competitions, international exchange programmes to MIT in USA and University of Waterloo in Canada, and research work further equipped him to be an all-rounder.

On 26 February 2018, Prof. Timothy Tong, President of PolyU officiated the Outstanding Student Awards Presentation Ceremony and presented the Certificate of Award to the top undergraduate students who excel in both academic and non-academic pursuits.

Congratulations to Mr Ouyang on receiving this honour.

Prof. Timothy Tong, President of PolyU (left) presented the award to Mr Xiating Ouyang (right)

Steered by Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, the Hong Kong ICT Awards (HKICTA) 2018 was organised by eight selected local industry associations and professional bodies. With the developed innovative information and communications technology (ICT) products, applications and business solutions, HKICTA participants competed for the top accolades in eight award categories: Smart Business Award, Digital Entertainment Award, FinTech Award, ICT Startup Award, Smart Living Award, Smart People Award, Smart Mobility Award and Student Innovation Award.

Our student team which consists of two COMP students and one student from Department of Electronic and Information Engineering proudly received the Student Innovation (Tertiary or Above) Silver Award with their project “Sense+” at the award presentation ceremony held at the Hong Kong Science Park on 26 March.

HKICTA aims at recognising and promoting outstanding ICT inventions, thereby encouraging innovation and excellence among Hong Kong’s ICT talents and enterprises in their constant pursuit of creative and better solutions to meet business and social needs.

Student Team “Sense+” (from the second left to the fourth)

Hong Kong ICT Awards 2018

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We are glad to announce that our student, Mr Andy Lam and his teammate, Miss Connie Yau from the School of Nursing, won a Silver Medal with their project titled “Clinic Express” at the 46th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva from 11 - 15 April 2018 in Switzerland.

“Clinic Express” is a mobile app aimed to ease the pressure on public healthcare system by making use of technology

to create a better acute care environment for the patients. It is a patient companion with various functions such as AI pre-triage system, consultation system, instant online medical booking services and public education. It could help in the pre-triage stage, allowing bypass of non-urgent cases to private medical services, as well as making suggestions for the benefit of urgent patients in need.

The International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva is under the patronage of the Swiss Federal Government, the State and the City of Geneva as well as the World Intellectual Property Organisation - WIPO. It is now acknowledged as the most important exhibition of inventions anywhere today with over 1,000 inventions and products showcased. Mr Andy Lam showcased his

project at the exhibition

A team formed by COMP graduates, Mr Yik Kan Leung, Miss Tin Yan Ng, Mr Chak Hei So and Miss Karen Kristine Tan was nominated by Internet Professional Association (iProA) to participate in the 13th edition of China Pan-Pearl River Delta Region IT Project Competition held in Macau on 3 - 4 July 2018. The team competed with 60 teams from more than 200 colleges and universities in different locations of China, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong. Finally, the team won the First Class Award with their project “Marketemy - Simulation Game for Learning of Digital Marketing” under the supervision of Dr Richard Lui, Teaching Fellow of COMP.

Marketemy is an e-marketing solution, which aims to provide hands-on experience for prospective higher education students to learn digital marketing concepts through mini-games. The player, as the marketing director of an online travel agency, could promote various types of travel packages by advertising in search engines and formulate marketing decisions in social media to generate engagement and sales.

Over the years, this annual advanced IT competition has promoted the IT development and helped cultivate the best IT talents for the Pan-Pearl River Delta Region’s communities and economies. It has also gathered tertiary students in the region to exchange ideas and further develop professional competence.

Silver Medal in The 46th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva

First Class Award in China Pan-Pearl River Delta Region IT Project Competition 2018

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To get students well-prepared for the certification, the training programme included workshops as well as intensive revisions and exercises by different trainers and game developers. On 19 January, Mr Marek Marchlewicz, Unity Evangelist from Unity Shanghai, was invited to PolyU to deliver a special training session introducing the latest Unity technologies about Cinemachine and fluid simulation.

Previous candidates of the examination were also invited to share their experiences. In addition to the technical training, we also invited a COMP alumnus to share his story of running a game start-up and a representative from Tencent to talk about the prospect of the games industry. After the programme, students’ programming skills were enhanced in general.

We are glad that 33 COMP students passed the rigorous Unity Certified Developer examination in June and attained the professional certification after joining the TCP. Having such certification allows students to demonstrate their applied knowledge, foundational game design and technical programming skills that meet the industry standards and facilitates their career development in the games industry.

Unity Developer was ranked number 7 on LinkedIn’s Top 20 Emerging Jobs in the US in 2017. The certification further recognises our students’ knowledge and technical skills that meet the industry standards and facilitates their career development in the games industry.

COMP always emphasises the integration of tertiary education with emerging industry practice. To provide diversified learning opportunities to students from time to time, COMP collaborates with various well-known corporations in the IT industry in order to strengthen student’s practical skills and enhance their employability in this modern digital era.

In January 2018, COMP launched a six-month Unity Training/ Certification Programme (TCP) with the aim of assisting students to prepare for the Unity Certified Developer examination held in June. This examination is currently the only professional certification in the games industry. COMP gave strong support to the students by sponsoring them on the examination fees. To get certified, candidates have to pass a rigorous test of technical and problem-solving skills designed by specialists and experts from the games, 3D and interactive industries.

Student Activities

COMP Students Attained Unity Developer Certification after Joining The Unity Training/ Certification Programme

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COMP organised a seminar on “How Does Microsoft Respond to Cyber Attack?” at PolyU on 3 February 2018. Mr Barry Kong, Analyst, Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) of Microsoft Hong Kong was invited to share the insights on cyber security, new trends in cyber attack and how DCU partners with law enforcement globally to investigate and take action against ransomware infection.

DCU is a special unit within Microsoft comprising of an international team of attorneys, analysts, investigators, data scientists, engineers and business professionals based in 30 countries, who work together and collaborate with law enforcement and stakeholders, to transform the ongoing fight against digital crime and global malware, reduce digital risk, and protect the general public. Mr Kong is also the Gold Award Winner of the Cyber Security Professionals Awards (CSPA) in 2017. He has in-depth knowledge and experience in cyber forensics and malware analysis, incident response, and other cyber security related technical topics.

Mr Barry Kong, Analyst, Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) of Microsoft Hong Kong

Seminar on “How Does Microsoft Respond to Cyber Attack?”

COMP and Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA) collaborated to establish the “Joint COMP/ ICMA Affiliate Membership Scheme”, offering our students with free courses in strategic business management, mentorship programme, networking opportunities, and complimentary affiliate ICMA membership. Prof. Allen Wong, Senior Vice President - Global of CMA Australia and Founding President of the ICMA (HK Chapter), was invited to introduce the requirements, competitive advantages of CMA programme, roadmap to becoming a certified management accountant, and members’ benefits to COMP students on 1 February 2018.

ICMA was officially incorporated in 1996 in Australia, which aims to provide local perspective and practicing management accountants with the opportunity to attain the highly-regarded CMA professional qualification, while to provide members with a wide range of professional development workshops and seminars on management accounting and current business topics. At present, there are 17 regional/ branch offices serving over 10,000 professional members around the world.

Joint COMP/ ICMA Affiliate Membership Scheme

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Corda Training/ Certification Programme and Microsoft Chatbot Workshop

In order to provide COMP students with more practical experience in blockchain application development, a Corda Training/ Certification Programme has been launched recently in collaboration with the Hong Kong Blockchain Society. A series of workshops were organised from March to April 2018. At the end of the programme, students who passed a test were awarded a certificate issued by the Hong Kong Blockchain Society.

On the same day, Ms Claudia Leung, Technical Account Manager, Enterprise Services Segment of Microsoft Hong Kong, who is also a COMP alumnus, delivered a training session on Microsoft Chatbot applications with laboratory exercises to help our students learn AI-related technology.

On 17 March, Dr Lawrence Ma, the President of the Hong Kong Blockchain Society, gave an introduction of the open distributed ledger platform, Corda, and its use cases in the industry. During the other workshops, core concepts of Corda, including state, contract, transaction, flow and node were introduced. Students were also given the opportunities to solve programming problems, design blockchain applications and develop CorDapps (applications on Corda) from scratch.

Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia (IFTA) organised a seminar on FinTech & Blockchain at PolyU on 2 March 2018 by inviting industry leaders to share their insights and experience. With the support from COMP and Institute for Entrepreneurship (IfE) of PolyU, the seminar attracted over a hundred participants.

IFTA Fintech & Blockchain Seminar

At the opening ceremony, Dr Miranda Lou, Executive Vice President of PolyU, Mr Paul Pong, Founder of IFTA and Dr David Chung, JP, Under Secretary for Innovation and Technology delivered the welcoming speech respectively. Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP, introduced COMP’s development on Financial Technology (FinTech) and Blockchain, along with other distinguished speakers from the industry including Mr Sanjay Bhandari, Co-Founder of Certificate of Finance and Technology of UK, Mr Lawrence Ma, President of Hong Kong Blockchain Society, and Mr Fred Sheu, National Technology Officer of Microsoft Hong Kong.

IFTA aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of FinTech education and qualifications in Asia. The seminar successfully brought different parties together to exchange knowledge and views, thus enhancing the promotion of Fintech and Blockchain technology and fostering collaboration.

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With the aim of fostering students’ creativity and talent, the annual Smart Computing Competition was held on 20 March with the support from Microsoft. This year, seven teams joined the competition. We invited notable industry professionals including Mr Fred Sheu, National Technology Officer of Microsoft Hong Kong, Mr Terence Leung, Manager of Youth Team of Cyberport and Mr Monsess Leung, Assistant Manager, Incubatee Development of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks to be the judges.

Smart Computing Competition 2018

During the competition, each team was given 20 minutes to present their technology projects, from idea generation to prototypes introduction, at the PolyU-Microsoft Smart Computing Lab. Our undergraduate student, Mr Yin Lam Kong, won the first prize in this competition. The projects were evaluated based on four main criteria: technology, innovation, concept and feasibility.

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. The Ethereum network allows people to exchange tokens of value, called Ether, which is currently the second most popular cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin.

On 23 March, COMP and the Hong Kong Blockchain Society jointly organised a workshop on “How to HACK Ethereum”. Mr Viktor Tabori, a representative of Hungary at the International Decentralized Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain and Co-founder & CTO of Etheal - a blockchain-based healthcare startup, was invited as the workshop tutor to share his knowledge and experience about Ethereum. He also introduced the basics of Solidity and the development of smart contract security. Students were given hands-on training to reproduce seven previous hacks on Ether as well.

Joint Workshop on “How to HACK Ethereum”

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Tencent is a multinational technology corporation both in China and the world and is well known for running one of the world’s largest messaging and social media apps, WeChat. Led by the Dean of Students Office and COMP, a group of PolyU students and staff visited Tencent in Shenzhen on 28 March 2018.

This one-day visit not only allowed our students to gain a deep understanding of Tencent’s culture and vision but also enabled them to understand how Tencent exploits the data collected from their apps and drones to improve the user experience and how literature, comic, game, film and drama are integrated to create synergy.

A guided visit to Tencent’s new headquarters - Tencent Seafront Tower was arranged. It is an intelligent building designed with a variety of green spaces. Different new technologies are applied to this twin-skyscrapers, such as rapid facial recognition is used for security and access control for employees.

Representatives from Tencent also hosted a customised workshop for our students at one of the Tencent WeStart offices where they learnt about product design as well as how startup enterprises could build and grow their businesses.

Visit Tencent Technology in Shenzhen

Co-organised by PolyU and Radica, “Big Datathon” - an annual hackathon event focusing on the application of big data, data analytics, and data science was successfully held at PolyU on 26 - 27 May. This competition gathered real business challenges and data from companies for contestants to solve real-world problems. It attracted over 150 university students, graduates, working professionals and startups. A team of three COMP students (Mr Ka Yu Chan, Mr Tsz Hin Chan and Mr Cheuk Yin Wong) won the PolyU Champion Award with their project “Course Designer”.

Big Datathon 2018

Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor & Associate Head of COMP (left) and PolyU Champion Awardees

On the first day of competition, 43 teams of two to five were formed. Each team selected one of the business challenges provided by PolyU, Radica and UBS respectively. By using fresh data and advanced tools, participants worked together in 24 hours to solve the data problems or pain points happening in the real business world. The team projects were evaluated by a panel of judges from academia and industry under four key criteria including quality of data crawling, creativity and innovation, demonstration of capability, and communication skills. Ten teams became finalists and competed for the PolyU/ Radica/ UBS Champion Awards, Best Data Hunter Award, Most Innovative Award and Best Presentation Award.

Big Datathon provides an excellent platform for data talents to put their technical knowledge into practice and on the other hand, for corporates to kick-off their big data projects and access to potential solutions.

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With the support of IEEE Hong Kong Section Computer Society Chapter, COMP and the Hong Kong Association for Computer Education (HKACE) jointly organised the fifth edition of Computer App Programming (CAP) Day at PolyU. CAP Day is an annual competition for secondary school students. To train up student’s programming and computing skills, CAP Day includes “Problem-solving Competition” and “Student Project Competition”.

The 5th Computer App Programming (CAP) Day

This year, the preliminary round of “Problem-solving Competition” was held on 11 May 2018 and attracted over 140 students from 23 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP, met the students and gave them big encouragement. The participants were asked to complete a multiple-choice question paper about basic programming and logical thinking within an hour. The 100 students with the highest scores were qualified to enter the finals held at PolyU on 14 July.

On the final day of competition, contestants were asked to complete mobile apps in 90 minutes by using App Inventor in order to strive for the championship. The participants of the “Student Project Competition” also presented their projects to the judges on that day, and the three winning teams were from HKTA The Yuen Yuen Institute No.1 Secondary School, Po Leung Kuk Laws Foundation College and Lok Sin Tong Ku Chiu Man Secondary School.

CAP Day provides an excellent platform for teenagers to develop computational and programming knowledge, enhance logical thinking skills, nurture creativity as well as increase team spirit.

Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP and Dr David Chung, JP, Under Secretary of the Innovation and Technology officiated the closing ceremony and presented trophies and prizes to the winners. Mr Wai Ming Kam, Chairman of HKACE and Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP also joined the ceremony.

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Under the “Joint COMP/ ICMA Affiliate Membership Scheme”, ICMA offered a two-day workshop on “Strategic Cost Management” to COMP students on 2 – 3 June 2018. Mr Melvin Beh, Executive Director of Malaysia Development of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants, Australia, who has over 20 years of international industrial and practical experience in management accounting, policies and standard operation procedures (SOPs) development, financial analysis and business modelling gained from different industries including logistics, sports and entertainment, information technology, and venture capital investment, was invited as the workshop trainer.

The course covered the complex modern industrial organisations within which various facets of decision-making and controlling operations take place, and some major contemporary issues that have emerged in managerial accounting were also discussed. It brought new business insights to our computer science students and equipped them with more industrial knowledge in the business field.

Mr Melvin Beh, Executive Director of Malaysia Development of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants, Australia

ICMA Workshop on Strategic Cost Management

PolyU 2 Days University Experience Programme (TUE) On 17 - 18 July 2018, Faculty of Engineering (FENG) organised a “2 Days University Experience Programme (TUE)” for Secondary 5 students who are taking Science, ICT, or M1/M2 subjects. TUE provided them opportunities to know more about university learning. The theme of this year is “From Physics and ICT to Engineering”, this programme attracted more than 230 students. Thematic lectures on various Engineering disciplines, campus tours, and laboratory visits were arranged.

Dr Henry Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head of COMP and Dr Peter Ng, Teaching Fellow of COMP were invited to introduce “Computing and Game Technologies” to the students. They learnt basic concepts of game technologies and interactive computing technologies including Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology. Over hundreds of students visited our Research Project Demonstration Lab and Virtual-reality and Game Lab where they found the projects and facilities very interesting.

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Building on the success of previous years, COMP and the Postgraduate Research Student Association (PRSA) of Computing jointly organised the seventh COMP Annual Research Day (CARD) with the theme of “Smart Robotics in FinTech” at PolyU on 8 June.

Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP, officiated at the opening ceremony. To encourage cross-area collaboration, students with different research background and areas formed into 16 groups of four to five to work together. Each group had to identify important research problems, propose innovative solutions and present their work to a panel of judges. Based on the significance of the problems, novelty and impact of solutions as well as presentation skills, the Best Proposal Awards went to three teams with the highest scores.

In the afternoon, Dr Zhen Cao, Principle Engineer of Huawei Technologies, was invited to deliver a speech on “Introduction to Central Software Institute - Navigating the future of Software” as well as to share his insights and experiences with the participants.

COMP Annual Research Day 2018

CARD is an important annual event to share research achievement and promote collaboration among COMP research students, research personnel and staff members. We look forward to more prominent and innovative research in COMP.

First Place Second Place Third Place

Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP

Dr Zhen Cao, Principle Engineer of Huawei Technologies

Award Proposal Title Awardee

First Place Fin-eco: A Reliable, Efficient and Intelligent Finance Eco-system Lei HanNingning HouXingye LuXinbo Yu

Second Place Humanoid Financial Assistant Robot Yanran Li Zhe Li Zexin Lu Fang Wang Yinyan Zhang

Third Place Personal Expense Robo-Advisor Yik Him HoPing Tat SinHiu Fai Yip

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Career Networking cum Best Project Award Competition 2018To help students prepare for their career, COMP organised a Career Networking cum Best Project Award Competition on 9 June. This networking event enabled students to interact with various companies’ representatives and explore different job opportunities. At the same time, among this year’s Final Year Projects, five were shortlisted to compete for Technological Achievement Award, Innovation Award, Outstanding Project Award as well as the Most ‘Liked’ Award.

The panel of judges was formed by the executives from Hong Kong Cyberport, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, InfoTech Services and CITIC Telecom International. These industry leaders not only shared the market trends and expectation from employers but also provided tips on career planning and interview skills.

COMP Workshops for JUPAS ApplicantsFollowing the successful initiative last year, thematic workshops on Virtual Reality (VR) and Cyber Security were held on both 21 and 26 June, attracting over a hundred JUPAS applicants to attend.

The VR workshops covered topics on Projection VR, Cave System, Editor Basics, Game Objects Models and Materials, Scripting Primer and Interactive Motion Sensing, etc. Participants were able to learn the skills of creating an interactive VR application with a Google Cardboard, which they found it very interesting.

During the Cyber Security workshops, topics like Shift Cipher and Substitution, Cryptography, Encryption Method, IoT Security and Malware Analysis were introduced. There were some in-class exercises for the students to practise code breaking and encryption technique.

In addition to the workshops, we arranged several consultation sessions for these students to meet with our academic advisors who answered their questions about JUPAS admission.

Participants enjoyed the classes very much as they were given the opportunities to gain new learning experience at the university. The workshops further fostered their interests towards computer science and information technology.

Award Awardee

Most ‘Liked’ Award Technological Achievement Award

Sin Hang Cheung

Innovation Award Ka Cheong Leung

Most ‘Liked’ Award Outstanding Project Award

Mingyu Ma

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Event and Activity Highlights

PolyU JUPAS Consultation Day 2018PolyU JUPAS Consultation Day 2018 was successfully concluded at PolyU campus on 19 May.

To provide admission strategies and more programme information to the JUPAS applicants, COMP arranged an Info Seminar on Broad Discipline of Computing, which attracted more than 130 participants. A series of mini-lectures themed on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Cyber Security, Virtual Reality (VR) and Game Development were also organised.

By the end of the day, a consultation session was held for applicants to interact with our academic staff and know more about the entrance requirement, curriculum and programme characteristics.

COMP Departmental Retreat 2018Aiming to strengthen the internal bonds of COMP, a departmental retreat themed “IQ - Innovation and Quality” was organised at Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel on 30 - 31 May with a participation of more than 40 staff members.

The two-day retreat was kicked off with an opening remark by Prof. Qin Lu, Professor and Interim Head of COMP, followed by a series of

discussions, workshops and sharing sessions on the good practice on research and teaching. COMP staff members fully engaged in the brainstorming, idea exchanging and discussions. Apart from that, some team building activities were organised to share knowledge, promote team spirits and develop group cohesion. All members worked towards the goal and they enjoyed the exciting games very much.

The retreat was a great success, providing a great opportunity for our staff members to set daily operations aside and immerse themselves in a relaxed environment that fostered concentration, motivation and collaboration.

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Conferences Held by COMP

Date Conference Person in Charge11 – 13 June The 15th IEEE International Conference on Sensing,

Communication and Networking (SECON 2018)Dr Bin Xiao, Associate Professor

13 – 15 June International Conference on Innovations in Business and Management (ICIBM 2018)

Dr Vincent Ng, Associate Professor

25 – 26 June The 5th International Conference on Algorithms for Computational Biology (AICoB 2018)

Dr Jesper Jansson, Assistant Professor

8 – 11 July IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI 2018) Dr Nan Guan, Assistant ProfessorProf. Zili Shao, Professor


Visits to COMP

Date Institution/ Organisation1 March Nanjing University, China

14 March Primary and Secondary School Students - EDB Smart City Project Programme (2017/18)

4 May Secondary School Students - Hong Kong Association for Computer Education (HKACE)

25 May Santa Laurensia Senior High School, Indonesia

14 June Shunde Government Officials and Entrepreneurs

17 July Beihang University, China

18 July Secondary School Students - PolyU 2 Days University Experience Programme (TUE) by FENG

24 July Beijing University of Technology, China

31 July Secondary School Students - PolyU Engineering Summer Camp by FENG

Group Visit - February to July 2018

Individual Visit - February to July 2018Date Visitor Institution/ Organisation 29 January – 2 February Prof. Liang Lin School of Data Science and Computer

Sun Yat-Sen University, China

29 January – 12 February Prof. Deyu Meng School of Mathematics and StatisticsXian Jiaotong University, China

4 – 14 February Prof. Yijia Chen School of Computer ScienceFudan University, China

8 – 14 February Dr Bingkai Lin National Institute of Informatics, Japan

5 – 18 March Prof. Shitong Wang School of Digital MediaJiangnan University, China

6 – 10 March Dr Weizhi Meng Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer ScienceTechnical University of Denmark, Denmark

16 – 22 March Prof. Jun Yu School of Computer Science and TechnologyHangzhou Dianzi University, China

23 – 26 March Prof. Xinyi Huang School of Mathematics and InformationFujian Normal University, China

23 – 26 March Dr Wei Wu School of Mathematics and InformationFujian Normal University, China

25 – 27 March Prof. Zhe Liu Department of Computer Science and TechnologyNanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China

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Date Visitor Institution/ Organisation 25 – 27 March Ms Ling Ling Laura Geng CollinStar Capital Pty Ltd, Australia

25 – 27 March Mr Jacob Cheng CollinStar Capital Pty Ltd, Australia

25 – 27 March Ms Lynne Payne Faculty of Information TechnologyMonash University, Australia

25 – 27 March Porf. Mark Wallace Faculty of Information TechnologyMonash University, Australia

25 – 27 March Dr Carsten Rudolph Faculty of Information TechnologyMonash University, Australia

11 – 14 April Mr David Shrier Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

26 April – 15 May Dr Fang Chao Faculty of Information TechnologyBeijing University of Technology, China

30 April – 7 May Prof. Tao Li Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Florida, USA

7 – 14 May Prof. Albert Yousif Hammo Zomaya School of Information TechnologiesThe University of Sydney, Australia

17 – 19 May Dr Sathish Gopalakrishnan Department of Electrical & Computer EngineeringThe University of British Columbia, Canada

3 – 9 June Prof. Tung Shuen Anthony Ho Department of Computer ScienceUniversity of Surrey, UK

3 – 9 June Prof. Saeid Sanei Research School of Science and TechnologyNottingham Trent University, UK

4 June Dr Jingren Zhou Alibaba Group, China

4 June Prof. Kwei Jay Lin Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer ScienceUniversity of California, Irvine, USA

4 June Prof. Tei Wei Kuo National Taiwan University, Taiwan

4 June Prof. Xin Yao Department of Computer Science and EngineeringSouthern University of Science and Technology, China

6 – 8 June Dr Joseph Liu Faculty of Information TechnologyMonash University, Australia

7 – 8 June Dr Fengwei Zhang Wayne State University, USA

10 June Dr Huanshui Zhang Shandong University, China

11 – 13 June Prof. Yunhao Liu Department of Computer Science and EngineeringMichigan State University, USA

11 – 13 June Porf. Yuanyuan Yang Stony Brook University, USA

11 – 13 June Dr Songtao Guo College of Electronic and Information EngineeringSouthwest University, China

11 – 13 June Dr Mo Li School of Computer Science and EngineeringNanyang Technological University, Singapore

11 – 13 June Dr Xili Wan School of Computer Science and TechnologyNanjing Tech University, China

11 – 13 June Dr Jianping Wang Department of Computer ScienceCity University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

11 – 13 June Prof. Baoliu Ye Department of Computer Science and TechnologyNanjing University, China

11 – 13 June Dr Shigeng Zhang Central South University, China

11 – 13 June Dr Yanmin Zhu Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

11 – 13 June Prof. Bixin Li Southeast University, China

11 – 13 June Prof. Hanhua Chen School of Computer Science and TechnologyHuazhong University of Science and Technology, China

11 – 13 June Prof. Guihai Chen Nanjing University, China

11 – 15 June Prof. Song Chun Zhu University of California, USA

21 – 24 June Dr Yonghui Wu School of Computer ScienceFudan University, China

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COMP Research Seminars To keep our academic staff members and students up-to-date with the cutting-edge technical knowledge in computing-related disciplines, as well as assist them in gaining exposure to a broad range of research topics, COMP regularly invites renowned speakers from global institutions to share with us their latest research findings.

Date Seminar Topic Speaker Institution9 February BLOCKCHAIN:

Buzzword/ Engineering/ Science? Prof. Michel Raynal IRISA-IFSIC

Université de RennesFrance

Department of ComputingThe Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityHong Kong

27 February Effective and Efficient Topic Mining and Exploration from Geo-textual Documents

Mr Kaiqi Zhao School of Computer Science and EngineeringNanyang Technological UniversitySingapore

8 March Do You Really Need Me? Towards Touch Behavioral Authentication on Mobile Devices

Dr Weizhi Meng Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer ScienceTechnical University of DenmarkDenmark

8 March Intelligent and Connected Systems for Sensible Urban Living

Dr Xiaofan Jiang Electrical Engineering DepartmentColumbia UniversityUSA

16 March Investigating Emerging Security Threats in Clouds and Data Centers

Mr Xing Gao Department of Computer ScienceCollege of William and MaryUSA

27 March Towards “Ecological Validity” for Interaction with Wearable Computers

Dr Simon Perrault Yale-NUS CollegeSingapore

13 April Graph Signal Processing: Theory & Applications to Imaging, Learning and beyond

Dr Gene Cheung National Institute of Informatics (NII)Japan

2 May Towards Efficient Architectural Support for AI-based IoT Applications

Prof. Tao Li Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of FloridaUSA

17 May Quantization of Fully Convolutional Networks for Accurate Biomedical Image Segmentation

Dr Yiyu Shi Department of Computer Science and EngineeringUniversity of Notre DameUSA

18 May Towards Certifiable Mixed-criticality Cyber-physical Systems

Prof. Sathish Gopalakrishnan

Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringThe University of British ColumbiaCanada

8 June Transparent Malware Analysis on x86 and ARM

Dr Fengwei Zhang Wayne State UniversityUSA

29 June Brief Introduction to Zero-Knowledge Proofs with Applications to Privacy Preserving Distributed Ledgers

Dr Kamil Krzysztof Kluczniak

Department of ComputingThe Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityHong Kong


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COMP ONLINE is publ ished by the Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic Universi ty. Please contact comp.market [email protected] for contr ibut ions or further information about the art ic les.

Department of ComputingThe Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityHung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong (852) 3400 3145 [email protected] www.comp.polyu.edu.hk

Date Activity/ Event

16 August Mini-workshop on “Some Recent Advances on Computer Vision and Deep Learning”

27 – 29 August The 12th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS)

28 August Undergraduate Orientation Programme

29 – 31 August Society of Computing Studies (SCS) Orientation Camp

1 September Taught Postgraduate Orientation Programme

6 October PolyU Education Info Day

3 November Lok Sin Tong 1st Care for Disadvantaged Groups – Innovation and Technology Design Competition

14 – 16 November PolyU 24th Congregation

11 – 13 December IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS)

17 – 19 December The 22nd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS)

Upcoming Events in 2018

Programme Highlights

A New Undergraduate Programme - BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology and Artificial IntelligenceOver the past few years, Financial Technology (FinTech) has created a revolution in the traditional financial services, reshaped the financial landscape and improved our financial lives. It is undeniable that FinTech will continue to boom. At the same time, Artificial intelligence (AI) is progressing and getting smarter as its adoption by fintech companies is gathering pace rapidly.

With the advent of AI and the rise of FinTech, there continues to be high demand for professionals in the finance and technology sectors. COMP has launched a top-up degree programme - BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology with the first year intake in 2017/18. To build on the success of the FinTech top-up degree programme and to nurture financial technologists satisfying the society needs, COMP is going to offer a brand new full-time degree programme - BSc (Hons) in Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence in the academic year of 2019/20 under the Broad Discipline of Computing (subject to approval).

This specialised interdisciplinary programme is designed for students in Arts, Science or Business backgrounds. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics including software engineering, computer systems security, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cryptocurrency, crowdfunding, e-finance and big data.

The new programme aims to cultivate fintech talents with the strength of developing intelligent software applications and innovative finance solutions, by equipping them with good fundamental computing knowledge with a focus in AI, sound finance concepts, and strong intellectual and practical skills to apply computing technologies in finance and related areas. Graduates are expected to be more adaptive to the fast-changing technology, economic and social environments in this highly modernising world.

To know more details about this programme, please visit our booth on the PolyU Education Info Day which will be held on 6 October 2018.

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