The 49^th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva was held in Switzerland from 17-21 April, 2024. Out of many inventions, two research teams from the Division of Integrative Systems and Design were recognized at this international renowned event.

The team led by Prof. Changying XIANG crowned the prestigious Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury on “Advanced Thermal-managed Photovoltaic Smart Window”.

Equipped with a passive radioactive thermal insulation layer on the front surface and a sound and thermal insulation module on the rear side, the photovoltaic glazing component reduces temperature rise caused by sunlight, minimizes heat transfer, and reduces external noise, making it highly suitable for smart home and smart city applications.

Another pioneering invention led by Prof. Mitch LI on “AI-generated Food with 3D Printing Solution and Simultaneous Infrared Heating” was also honored with silver medal. 

The AI-enhanced approach in 3D printing technology combines extrusion-based printing with simultaneous infrared heating, allowing for rapid cooking of complex starch-based food and other common printable food types and making 3D food printing more accessible.

Congratulations to Prof. Xiang and Prof. Li and the teams on the remarkable achievements!

[ISD Seminar - Benchmarking Photometric Stereo Using a Broader Range of Real-world Data] was presented by Prof. Boxin SHI, a Boya Young Fellow Associate Professor and Research Professor at Peking University on 9th April 2024. 

Since the first real-world benchmark dataset for photometric stereo (DiLiGenT) has been proposed in CVPR’16/TPAMI’19, almost all data-driven photometric stereo methods published after that evaluated their performances on it. But DiLiGenT’s scale and diversity can no longer meet the requirement of comprehensively evaluating newly proposed methods continuing to spring up, especially when recent models trained with large-scale synthetic data demonstrating strong generalization capabilities. If there is a sufficient amount of synthetic data and the model's capabilities are strong enough, do we still need to spend time and efforts in collecting real-world datasets? This talk will introduce recently released real-world photometric stereo benchmarks covering a broader range of objects, including 1) the DiLiGenT10^2  dataset containing objects of controlled  shape and reflectance variation through mechanical manufacturing (CVPR'22), 2) the DiLiGenT-Pi dataset containing planar objects with rich details through micron-level 3D scanning (ICCV'23), and 3) the DiLiGenRT dataset containing quantified reflectances by manufacturing hemispheres with varying degrees of roughness and translucency (CVPR'24). Based on the new series of benchmark datasets, state-of-the-art photometric stereo methods are systematically evaluated, and some open problems are discovered.

Boxin Shi is currently a Boya Young Fellow Associate Professor (with tenure) and Research Professor at Peking University, where he leads the Camera Intelligence Lab. He has also been a Young Scientist at Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence. He received the PhD degree from the University of Tokyo in 2013. From 2013 to 2017, he did research at MIT Media Lab, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Nanyang Technological University, and National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. His research interests are computational photography and computer vision. He has published more than 200 papers, including 23 papers in TPAMI and 82 papers in CVPR/ICCV/ECCV.  His papers were awarded as Best Paper - Runner Up at ICCP 2015 and selected as Best Papers from ICCV 2015 for IJCV Special Issue. He received the Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2021. He has served as an associate editor of TAPMI/IJCV and an area chair of CVPR/ICCV/ECCV. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE/CCF/CSIG, and a Distinguished Lecturer of APSIPA. Please access his lab’s website for more information: http://camera.pku.edu.cn

Chinachem PrimeMovership Award Presentation cum Project Showcase 2023/2024 was held on 25th March 2024 in Information Center at HKUST. Representatives from Chinachem and HKUST were invited to the ceremony to show their support. 

Bridging academic success to real-world contributions is no easy task. Here in ISD, we are grateful to have supportive industry partners jointly nurturing talents for creating impacts. This year, 20 students from ISD received Chinachem PrimeMovership Award, recognizing their outstanding efforts in both academic study and innovative project development.

We are honoured to have Ar. Donald Choi, Chief Executive Officer of Chinachem Group to present the awards. Our winning project teams also took the chance to present their ideas and showcase the potential usages of their inventions. The event ended with an exciting robotic arm demonstration by our faculty members and students in our maker space ISDworks!.

ISD will continue to provide top-notch education to raise generations of technology talents. The path of innovation should extend beyond school and reach to every part of the society. Chinachem PrimeMovership Award is a successful example of cooperation between academia and industry.

(From Left) Mr Edwin Keh, CEO of The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel, Professor Feng Jun, Vice-President of the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel Limited,  and Professor Zhang Qian, Acting Head of the Division of Integrated Systems and Design at HKUST sign the MoU

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel Limited (HKRITA), and Wuhan Textile University (WTU) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on March 28, to strengthen collaboration and foster innovation in the fields of new fiber materials, healthy living, and green manufacturing.

This strategic partnership aims to consolidate the strengths and resources of the three institutions, creating a robust ecosystem that drives cutting-edge research and development, talent cultivation, product innovation, and startup project incubation. This collaboration is expected to not only enhance the capabilities of the three organizations but also bring positive impacts on the industry and society as a whole.

Under the framework of this collaboration, the three institutions will undertake market-driven joint research projects to expedite the application of new fiber materials across diverse fields and develop innovative solutions to address societal needs and challenges. The collaboration will also focus on nurturing the next generation of leaders and innovators in the textiles and apparel sector. Joint training programs, exchange opportunities, and internships will provide students with valuable hands-on experience and exposure to cutting-edge research and industry practices. Furthermore, the partnership will actively support the development of new products and technologies, facilitating the translation of research outcomes into commercial applications. By fostering a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation, the institutions aim to incubate and accelerate promising startup projects, driving economic growth and creating sustainable solutions for the industry.

HKUST student team – ENTERPRIZE was awarded the 1^st runner up in the RoboMaster University League (RMUL) 2024. 3 talented students from ISD were part of the core members of the team. We are so proud of you!

The RMUL, which leads by Shenzhen academic institutes and universities, aims to build a community to promote the exchange of robotics technology and support young innovators in the Greater Bay Area. HKUST team enrolled into 3V3 Match, where each team needs to develop Standard, Hero and Sentry robots independently and engage in tactical combat in the designated battlefield. The team with the highest remaining Base HP wins. This year, 8 university teams from Shenzhen and Hong Kong participated in the game, making it even more hostile.

After several rounds of hard matches, ENTERPRIZE was one of the strongest teams with high remaining Base HP and was awarded the 1^st runner up. They have demonstrated excellent robotic control techniques and deployed combating strategies during the game. Hope that they can keep the spirit up and fight with the best in future. Let’s share our respect and love to ENTERPRIZE!

A big round of applause to Prof. Mitch LI and his research team for their accepted article on Advanced Functional Materials, one of the top journals in this field.

The research introduced a new approach to creating 3D microstructures with higher simplicity and repeatability, which is a significant improvement in advanced manufacturing, especially in emerging miniaturized applications, e.g. invasive robotics, minimized drug delivery, implanted batteries and nano photonics. 

Self-assembly is a powerful strategy for creating 3D artificial structures. The existing thin film release techniques limits structural complexity. Prof. Mitch LI and his team proposed a localized laser scribing strategy that can guide the self-assembly of 2D thin films into 3D microstructures. The laser-induced heating and momentum can release the films and roll them into various microstructures. This method allows accurate control of shapes, curvatures, orientations, and sizes for the fabricated rolls. No pre-patterning or post-drying is needed. The flexibility and simplicity of this method represents a significant improvement over existing self-assembly techniques and may enrich thin film self-assembly materials and applications.

Let’s take a look at this video and understand how a localized laser scribing strategy prepares gold micro-rolls.

Congratulations to Prof. Sai-Kit Yeung and Ms Haixin Liang (Mphil student of ISD) for getting their groundbreaking research paper selected as a 'Highlight' in the top-tier conferences -  IEEE/CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2024. The research team presents the first foundation model for coral image segmentation and has hopes to turn it into a new standard tool for coral visual research.

Coral is one of the key indicators of marine research due to coral’s rich biodiversity and sensitivity to small environmental changes. However, segmenting coral is no easy task due to its irregular boundaries and degraded water quality. Therefore, underwater coral visual understanding has gained increasing attention within the computer vision community. Prof. Yeung and his team introduced CoralSCOP, the first foundation model that can segment dense coral reef automatically and has strong generalization ability to project the full image of coral reef. The model also offers user-defined tuning and sparse-to-dense conversion for precise coral statistics. To maximize its usage, the team also incorporated mask-referring segmentation and instruction-following segmentation so that both amateurs and advanced researchers could master the model.

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) ranks top on Research.com’s 2023 Best Computer Science Conference List. Among the 11.532 valid papers, only 2.8% of them were selected as highlights. This appreciate recognizes the innovation of ISD and Prof. Yeung’s team. The research results contribute to human capacity in underwater computer vision research and signify HKUST’s advanced ability in Marine AI research.

For more information about CoralSCOP, please visit the website: https://coralscop.hkustvgd.com.

ISD is honoured to have Mr Freddy Lee, Chief Executive Officer, and Ms Vanessa Wo, Assistant General Manager of Corporate Communications of SOCAM Development Limited to present the the Shui On Innovation Fund Student Awards 2022-23 to three outstanding teams: Realcycle, EIT Fitness and TramEx.

Shui On Innovation Fund aims to support the learning, innovation and project development of ISD students and nurture a new generation of technology innovators. Part of the fund is allocated as Student Awards in recognition of outstanding projects. Through rigorous selection process by ISD faculty and representatives from SOCAM Development Limited, only the best student group from each study year could receive this meaningful award.

Realcycle – Outstanding project from year 2
Fields: Computer vision & model training, spectrometry sorting mechanism for integrated bottle recycle to increase plastic recycling success rate
Awardees: Ho Fung LAU, Lai Yin Garmisch WONG, Pak Long WONG, Yan Ki WAN, Cheuk You Tweety KWAN

EIT Fitness – Outstanding project from year 3
Fields: Human tissue real-time monitoring system, gym monitoring, electrodes & machine learning
Awardees: Chuyue GONG, Qixuan Li, Haosong ZHONG

TramEx – Outstanding project from year 4
Fields: Advertising, configurable tram interior and spatial design for interactive and immersive tram experience
Awardees: Yin Colman CHEUK, Man Hei CHONG, Chun Hei Brandon LAW, Hei Yui Jasmine LI, Man Yin WONG