News
Honorable Mention Award at the ACM International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (MobileHCI’24)
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.
The team addresses the limitations in current VR user authentication systems, which often rely on cumbersome password-based or static biometric methods that are susceptible to shoulder surfing attacks. Their innovative solution, Medusa3D, introduces a challenge-response authentication system based on reflexive eye responses. These responses are involuntary and effortless, providing a secure and user-friendly method for authentication.
NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund
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. Hou is set to further explore the domain of spatio-temporal perception and analysis algorithms, utilizing a variety of modalities such as event data and 3D point clouds. This opportunity will enable him to pioneer new research avenues, with the potential to deepen our understanding of complex environments and transform how we interact with and interpret visual information. His work promises significant advancements in immersive 3D telepresence, intelligent surveillance systems, the metaverse, and autonomous driving technologies.
The NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund aims to support young scholars with commendable achievements in basic research, encouraging them to conduct innovative investigations in their chosen fields. The fund strives to accelerate the development of creative young talents and cultivate a cadre of exceptional researchers at the forefront of international science.
Finalist in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) AIxCC competition
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.
The DEF CON is an annual networking and innovation platform for cybersecurity professionals, featuring cutting-edge talks and hands-on workshops dedicated to security, privacy and emerging technologies. In the AIxCC Semifinal Competition, teams were tasked with developing the next-generation Cyber Reasoning Systems in the era of AI to automatically process a set of Challenge Projects to identify and rectify vulnerabilities. The AIxCC Final Competition will be held in August 2025.
Waymo Open Dataset Challenges 2024
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, Dr Yung-Hui Li of Hon Hai Research Institute and PhD student Yu-Kai Huang of Carnegie Mellon University. Meanwhile another team ModeSeq (team members: Prof Jianping Wang, Mr Zikang Zhou, Dr Yung-Hui Li and Mr Yu-Kai Huang) also achieved Second Place in the Motion Prediction Challenge. The Prizes for First Place and Second Place are $10,000 and $5,000 in Google Cloud credits, respectively.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in California. In 2019, Waymo publicly released the Waymo Open Dataset to support the AI research community in exploring various aspects of machine perception and autonomous driving technology. In the Sim Agents Challenge, the teams were given the agent tracks for the past 1 second on a corresponding map, and optionally the associated lidar for this time interval, then they were tasked with simulating 32 realistic joint futures for all the agents in the scene. The contributions of the teams in these Challenges have significantly aided Waymo in advancing the cutting-edge AI research.