Tan Tieniu, deputy director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Tan is also former vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, specializing in computer vision and pattern recognition. He gave a talk about big visual data analysis at the symposium. (Provided to China Daily)

The Big Data Institute of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) hosted the first Big Data and AI Day on Friday. It invited academics and industry experts from Hong Kong and overseas to share their insights into the future of this important field.

The event attracted more than 500 guests. They included local and overseas academics, leaders in big data and artificial intelligence (AI)-related industries, and students.

Tan Tieniu, deputy director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, gave a keynote address about big visual data analysis. Tan said: “Hong Kong is a great place for big data and AI, and big data and AI are a great hope for Hong Kong making the place smarter and stronger.”

Tan is also former vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, specializing in fields including computer vision and pattern recognition. He expressed high hopes for Hong Kong’s future in developing big data and AI.

Tan referred to a recent global ranking showing the SAR is ranked third, ahead of the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, in terms of the quality of its AI-related publications.

London-based Times Higher Education’s data analysis on AI research analyzed AI-related publication volume and quality between 2011 and 2015 from Elsevier’s database. In regard to field-weighted citation impact, an indicator of the quality of publications, it ranked Hong Kong third. This put it just behind Switzerland and Singapore.

HKUST President and mathematician Tony Chan Fan-cheong, officiating at the symposium, stressed the university’s edge in this area. He said Hong Kong had an important role in leading further breakthroughs in big data and AI-related advancements.

Dean of Engineering Tim Cheng Kwang-ting in his opening remarks said that since the establishment of the HKUST Big Data Institute in 2016 it had successfully served as a platform for cross-disciplinary and cross-organizational research collaboration. It was also involved in cooperation with industrial partners and in developing new education programs in big data and AI technologies.

As well as setting up the Big Data Institute, HKUST has launched other big data and AI initiatives. These include WeChat-HKUST Joint Lab on Artificial Intelligence Technology, Big Data for Bio Intelligence Laboratory; there are also two new programs in big data technology. These are a Master of Science program and an undergraduate minor program.

Yang Qiang, head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Big Data Institute, led a group of HKUST academics and shared HKUST’s latest achievements.

“The world is fast becoming a digital society and in the process, a lot of data is accumulated. Whoever can master the power of this data will move ahead,” Yang predicted. He said HKUST could help Hong Kong make an impact in this field.

Christos Faloutsos, professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, spoke about detecting anomalies in large graphs. He believes careful analysis of massive data sets, or “big data analytics”, can reveal insights, patterns and anomalies which would otherwise be hidden.

Industry leaders, including Ye Jieping, vice-president of Didi Research from the car-hailing company Didi Chuxing and Masayuki Mizuno, deputy general manager of Data Science Research Laboratories at NEC Corporation, also discussed their companies’ experience in big data and AI development.

The symposium on Friday provided a platform for many HKUST students to present applications of different aspects of big data and AI.

Note: This article is from the CHINADAILY(HONGKONG) , click on “Read more” to enter the original link.