Innovation Wing Two

TechTalk – Cyber-Physical Internet (CPI) for Cross-Border Logistics of Manufactured Products

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

The vision of “Cyber-Physical Internet (CPI)” is to establish a new paradigm for sending and receiving manufactured goods just like sending and receiving instant messages over the internet using online chatting platforms. Four innovations are critical to achieve this ultimate vision: (1) digitization architecture for entangling the flows of information and materials into one flow of cyber-physical objects for manufacturing and logistics operations; (2) network services for configuring local aera network (LAN), wide area network (WAN) and catchment area network (CAN); (3) value mechanisms to motivate and facilitate participation and collaboration between multiple stakeholders including shippers, carriers, forwarders; and (4) decision analytics for synchronized logistics planning, scheduling and execution. These innovations are based upon some fundamental breakthroughs of CPI routers and TCP/PIP protocols that are yet to be developed.

Tech Talk – Innovation of Originality for Solving Sand Shortage Crisis around the World including Hong Kong

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

Sand is the most exploited raw solid material in the world and used for construction of buildings, roads, railways, bridges, tunnels and beaches. It is also used to make the glass and silicon chips. The annual consumption for use in glass, concrete and construction materials has reached 50 billion tones, which is extremely high. Consequently, according to United Nations’ reports, the world is facing a shortage crisis of sand, as one of the greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century. Such sand shortage crisis around the world has affected the use of sand in Hong Kong since Hong Kong does not produce any sand and all the sand used in Hong Kong is imported from Mainland China. In this Teck Talk, Professor Yue will present his technological innovation of originality. His innovation can solve this global sand shortage crisis. More importantly, his innovation can provide a stable supply of quality sand for construction and industry and offer new raw material resources for developing new industry in Hong Kong. Professor Yue has discovered that the local ordinary soil in Hong Kong can be converted into the materials of sand and clay. The sand is silica sand and mainly quartz mineral. The clay is mainly kaolinite mineral. Both materials can be used as the raw solid materials in construction and other industry. Professor Yue will demonstrate that his technical innovation is simple, environmental-friendly, sustainable and cost-effective and can be applied to many places around the world for producing quality sand materials.

Tech Talk – Seeing the unseen in biomedicine with laser

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

In the past 10+ years, laser microscopy has successfully made it permeated not only in biochemistry and cell/molecular biology research, but also in numerous preclinical and clinical applications. However, our understanding of health and disease is still very limited. This lecture will introduce the latest breakthrough in laser microscopy technologies developed at HKU that can address some of these challenges. Especially these technologies can generate unprecedented views and understanding of the living biological cells. They include: capturing high-resolution motion picture of the swift-flying brain signals in a living animal; visualizing the inner workings of biological cells and organisms in 3D without killing them; and detecting rare cancer cells in millions of blood cells. Not only can these technologies impact new biological discovery (e.g. neuroscience), but also creating many new opportunities in cost-effective clinical diagnosis, especially cancer screening.

Smart Water Auditing for Hong Kong

Innovation Wing Two, Second exhibition / By

The project is an integral part of a flagship research initiative being carried out under the auspices of the HKU Center for Water Technology and Policy. The Water Centre was jointly established by the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Social Sciences to conduct cutting-edge research on water science, technology and policy issues that pertain to the broader urban sustainability agenda. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of the members of our inter-disciplinary project team. They come from the Department of Civil Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Politics and Public Administration and the Faculty of Social Sciences.

nD Blockchain for ESG Reporting

Innovation Wing Two, Second exhibition / By

The introduction of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Reporting Guide (Guide) by HKEX in 2013, and the subsequent upgrade of the Guide’s reporting obligation to “comply or explain” in 2016, have significantly moved the dial for Hong Kong issuers’ ESG reporting. However, ESG reporting faces many bottlenecks, including data authenticity, consistency, and transparency. Professor Huang’s team developed an IoT- and blockchain-based platform to upgrade the ESG reporting industry.

CHITCHAT: Clinical History Taking Chatbot Mobile App for Medical Students

Innovation Wing Two, Second exhibition / By

Undergraduate medical education has been severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. While lectures can be easily conducted online via Zoom, clinical bedside teachings, including training of history taking skills from patients, cannot be easily replaced. A novel chatbot mobile app for training of undergraduate medical students’ clinical history taking skills was developed.

MindPipe: High-performance and Carbon-efficient Four-dimensional Parallel Training System for Large AI Models

Innovation Wing Two, Second exhibition / By

MindPipe, the first 4D parallel training system for large DNN models, has the following objectives:
1. Greatly reducing load imbalance in GPU pipeline parallel stages; 2. Effectively resolving contention of the 3D parallel communication tasks; 3. Deterministically scheduling multiple subnets to be trained in supernet parallelism, a novel parallel dimension proposed by MindPipe; and 4. Automatic near-optimal 4D configuration of GPUs considering both DNN converging efficiency and GPU utilization.

Wireless AI Perception: A New Sense for Machine Intelligence

Innovation Wing Two, Second exhibition / By

Computer vision enables machines to “see”. The capability of machine vision based on cameras, however, is fundamentally limited to a certain field-of-view with good lighting conditions – they cannot see through any occlusions or in the dark.
Wireless sensing opens a new sense for machine perception to decipher the physical world, even in absolute darkness and through walls and obstacles.
It can capture human activities invisibly in a contactless and sensorless way.