Six teams of students of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) swept top awards in the 13^th Challenge Cup held at Soochow University recently, and won the Hong Kong and Macau Cup again this year. The University was the only institution in Hong Kong to receive this highest honour in the region for 6 consecutive times since 1997. It was also the first time a participating university from Hong Kong and Macau region received three first prize awards in one competition. 

At a celebration held today (14 November), Prof. Fanny Cheung, Pro-vice-Chancellor of CUHK congratulated the students.  Professor Cheung said, 'CUHK always strives to explore students' creativity and promotes students' interests in research development. The Challenge Cup is considered the premier national competition of extra-curricular technological projects of university students. It pools the best young innovative brains from all corners of China. I am pleased with students' outstanding results. I hope that our students will continue to use their creativity and intelligence to develop research projects that benefit humankind.' 

As a biennial national competition, the Challenge Cup is known as the 'Olympics' in promoting innovation in social science, science and technology for university students in China. The HKSAR delegation from 14 institutions in Hong Kong and Macau comprising over 100 students was led by Prof. Fok Tai-fai, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of CUHK to participate in the competition.  The participating institutions included CUHK, the University of Hong Kong, the University of Science and Technology, City University of Hong Kong, Lingnan University, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Chu Hai College as well as University of Macau, Science and Technology University of Macau and Polytechnic Institute of Macau. 

The University will hold an exhibition of student achievements in innovation and entrepreneurship including the six winning projects at the University Exhibition Hall, G/F, University Library, CUHK, from 6 January to 17 January 2014. 

Projects and awards are listed below.

Prof. Charles K. Kao, former Vice-Chancellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), celebrates his 80^th birthday today (4 November).  Prof. and Mrs. Charles K. Kao have had an enjoyable morning at a birthday party held on CUHK campus, meeting many old friends and colleagues at CUHK who conveyed their best wishes and respect to the great man.  

Prof. Joseph J.Y. Sung, Vice-Chancellor of CUHK, said, 'We are most delighted to celebrate Professor Kao's birthday today with our greatest love and respect for Prof Kao.  Professor Kao's contributions to CUHK are tremendous.  His wisdom and vision have inspired numerous young people and his great innovation has changed the world.  Let us wish him good health and a lot of happiness in many many years to come.' 

Mrs. Gwen Kao thanked CUHK members for their kindness, ‘Professor Kao and I are very happy to meet so many old friends on his 80^th birthday today.  I am truly grateful for all your love and care for Professor Kao.’ 

Professor Kao joined CUHK in 1970 to set up the Department of Electronic Engineering, and served as the founding Chairman of the department.  In 1987, he became the third Vice-Chancellor of CUHK and held office until 1996.  During his term of service, he launched a number of new undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and he set up the Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Education and a number of research institutes, laying a solid foundation for CUHK to develop into a world-class comprehensive, research-led university.  Professor Kao guided the Faculty of Engineering to concentrate resources on computer science, electronic engineering and information technology.  In these 20 or more years, the directions that he laid down for the Faculty have gone well with Hong Kong's overall development.  For his study on fibre optics application in communication, Professor Kao was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009.  He donated his medal and certificate to the University as a momento.  Under the leadership of Professor Kao, CUHK was the first organization to introduce optical fibre in Hong Kong, connecting Hong Kong to the global internet. 

Mrs. Gwen Kao has in recent years founded The Charles K. Kao Foundation for Alzheimer's Disease Limited to enhance care and support to Alzheimer's patients, their families and caregivers.  In future, Mrs. Kao will continue to lead the Foundation to raise the public awareness of Alzheimer's disease, educating the general public on brain healthcare strategies. 

For more photos, please visit:
http://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/en/events_recap_detail.php?1=1&1=1&id=148&s

A postgraduate engineering student at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), LI Chak-man, under the supervision of Prof. LAU Wing-cheong, Department of Information Engineering, has developed ‘Authenticated Paper’ – an anti-counterfeiting technology that is cost-effective, simple-to-use and secure.  The technology can be used to create authenticated paper-based documents or credentials which can be easily verified by handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets, without requiring network access.  The technology has won the Professor Charles K. Kao Student Creativity Award 2013, and will be showcased, along with four other projects of CUHK, in the coming Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) 2013 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 13 to 16 October.  Members of the public are welcome to visit the CUHK booth to learn more about them. 

Offline verification protects data privacy

All printed documents or credentials are potentially subject to counterfeiting and forgery.  Conventional counterfeiting solutions such as watermarking or printing using special-quality papers are not cost-effective.  Other common low-cost solutions such as authorized chops or stamps may only provide a false sense of security.  The use of online verification may also be vulnerable to data leakage or limited by network service availability. 

The Authenticated Paper technology developed by Professor Lau and Li Chak-man allows issuing authority to create paper-based documents and credentials embedded with 2D barcodes which can carry a large amount of authenticated data which can easily be verified by handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets without requiring network access. 

Professor Lau said, ‘Our system does not require personal data to be stored online and thus minimizes the risk of privacy leakage.  The self-authenticating document can also be readily replicated by photocopiers or printers without compromising its security properties.  This technology can be applied in the production of low-cost, forgery-proof credentials such as education diplomas, cheques, medical certificates, invoices, payment receipts, and other identity documents.’ 

Professor Charles K. Kao Student Creativity Awards 2013

Li Chak-man’s project has won the second runner-up award in the Professor Charles K. Kao Student Creativity Awards 2013.  The award is a biennial competition in technological innovation for full-time students of CUHK.  It was first introduced in 2004–05 as the Vice-Chancellor's Cup of Student Innovation.  The competition under the theme ‘Innovation for Better Life’ this year aims at promoting the culture of innovation and encouraging inter-disciplinary collaboration among undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) 

Date: 13-16 October 2013

Time: 9:30am – 6:30pm (It will be closed at 5:00pm on 16 October)

Venue:Hong KongConvention and Exhibition Centre Hall 1A Concourse (CUHK Booth No.: 1CON-038). 

Please find more details about ‘Authenticated Paper’ from the following website:

http://mobitec.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/authpaper/index.php

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) will showcase 12 technological projects at the coming International ICT Expo 2013 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 13 to 16 April. Among them is the 'Binocular Tone Mapping' technology which provides an alternative way for users to watch high-quality 3D images at a low cost. 

With the wide popularity of 3D movies, more and more filmmakers produce movies in 3D. However, the dynamic range of current display devices is quite limited and can only present a much smaller range of intensity as compared with our daily visual experiences. Although the fast-growing HDR (High dynamic range) technology can preserve richer content of images, current display technology lacks the ability to accurately show HDR outputs. 

To tackle the problem, Prof. WONG Tien Tsin, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, CUHK, and his team has recently developed an innovative technology called 'Binocular Tone Mapping'. By utilizing the binocular fusion property of human vision system and the increasingly popular stereoscopic devices, the new technology offers users a low-cost and comfortable way to simultaneously perceive both the high contrast as well as the rich texture details at both dark and bright regions, so as to gain an enriched visual experience. 

Similar to two independent visual receptors, human's two eyes are able to tolerate certain degree of differences between our left and right views, e.g. disparity, differences in color, contrast, and even fine content. Our brain can naturally fuse the differences from both views, without awareness of such differences. The CUHK research team is the first to make use of this human vision phenomenon to develop 'Binocular Tone Mapping'. 

Via an optimization process, the new technology synthesizes a pair of images, one exhibits high contrast, while the other preserves the fine details. With a pair of 3D glasses and a 3D display device, a user can simultaneously visualize the image pair. These images are optimally synthesized in a way such that the user's brain can naturally fuse the two views, and perceive more visual content than any single image can offer. The dark and bright regions of the image, including rich color and texture details, can be shown clearly.  The image perceived will be closer to the scene viewed by human eyes. 

The 'Binocular Tone Mapping' technology can combine with existing stereoscopic (disparity based) movies without hurting the existing stereoscopic experience. It also virtually compensates the luminance attenuation due to the wearing of 3D glasses. The technology can be generally applied to 3D movie production, 3D games, 3D visualization as well as other digital visual entertainment applications. Users can watch images with high-quality visual effects by common 3D display devices. Comparing to the HDR technology which need the setup of expensive equipment, 'Binocular Tone Mapping' technology has a wider range of applications with a lower cost. 

Based on the binocular fusion property of human vision system, the larger the difference between the two images, the more details of the images can be seen by a user. However, there is a limit on the image difference. Exceeding such limit may lead to the visual discomfort. This technology can maximize the difference between the two images to the extent that is acceptable to human vision, and therefore allows users to watch the images in a more comfortable way. 

To know more about the aforementioned technology and other recent technological projects, please visit the booth of CUHK at the International ICT Expo (Booth No.: 3G-B04).