Prof Jun WANG was elected as a new Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering (HKAE) for the year 2024 during the 31st HKAE Annual General Meeting held on 9 December 2024. 

Professor Cong WANG, Professor and Associate Head in the Department of Computer Science, has been recognised for his pioneering work in developing innovative data and AI security technologies. His research focuses on safeguarding private data while unlocking the potential of data value in FinTech ecosystems. Prof. WANG’s contributions include the development of encrypted databases, privacy-preserving data analytics platforms, and AI security systems, which have significantly enhanced the integrity and robustness of AI operations in the financial sector.

Prof Weitao Xu, together with CS PhD graduate Dr Di Duan and former CS Research Assistant Mr Aochen Jiao, have been awarded the Honorable Mention Award at the ACM International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (MobileHCI’24).  Their paper titled “Medusa3D The Watchful Eye Freezing Illegitimate Users in Virtual Reality Interactions”, was recognized at the conference held from 30 September to 3 October 2024 in Melbourne, Australia.

Prof Hou, Junhui David has been honored with the prestigious NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund (国家自然科学基金委员会 - 优秀青年科学基金项目) in recognition of his contributions to the field of multi-dimensional visual information reconstruction and analysis, encompassing advancements in light field, hyperspectral imaging, and 3D geometry.  His project, titled 高维视觉信息重建和处理, is awarded with an approved amount of RMB 2 million. 

Prof Huang Heqing, in collaboration with four international scholars from IBM and Texas A&M University, became a finalist in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) AIxCC competition.  His team "All you need is a fuzzing brain" was awarded USD$2 million in the AIxCC Semifinal Event held at the DEF CON 32 from 9 to 11 August 2024 in Las Vegas, USA. 

Our team BehaviorGPT had secured the First Place at the Sim Agents Challenge of the 2024 Waymo Open Dataset Challenges on 20 June.  The team comprised Prof Jianping Wang, Prof Nan Guan, Research Associate Xinhong Chen and two CS PhD students Zikang Zhou and Haibo Hu, in collaboration with Visiting Professor Kui Wu from University of Victoria, Prof Chun Jason Xue of Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence,