Research Areas
- Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, and Multimedia Processing
- Optical Communications and Networking
- Cryptography, Security and Privacy
- Networking Theory, Internet and Applications
- Communications and Information Theory
- Wireless Communications and Networking
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, and Multimedia Processing
The explosive growth of data, which we have been witnessing since the onset of the new century, has greatly reshaped our everyday life. The data being generated at an unprecendented rate present significant challenges in storage, computation, and communication. Our research focuses on the development of new methodologies and systems to meet such challenges. In particular, we are interested in studying the following topics:
- Machine learning methods for large-scale data analytics and distributed computing environment
- Optimization techniques under streaming and distributed settings
- Efficient sketch or summary of large amount of data
- Scalable algorithms for probabilistic inference
Our multimedia research focuses on intelligent processing of image, video, and computer graphics. Current research topics range from image retrieval on the internet, face recognition and photo management, video editing and tracking, 3D object reconstruction and retrieval.
Our work on "Intent Search" has been adopted by the image search engine at "Bing.com" of Microsoft. Our work on "Dark Channel Prior", a novel image prior we discovered, has won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2009.
Faculty: Sean TANG, Dahua LIN, Bolei ZHOU, Pascal O. VONTOBEL
Related website: Multimedia Laboratory
Optical Communications and Networking
Optical communication prevails over other technologies for long distance and/or high-capacity transmission. It plays a crucial role in the now indispensable Internet infrastructure that supports all services, spanning from telecommunication, finance, medicine, entertainment, to social networking. It constitutes the major infrastructure for core, metro and access networks. Our major thrust in lightwave system and network research is to investigate the architecture and the enabling technologies to achieve highly efficient and flexible optical systems/networks. The current research topics include:
- Design of optical metro/access network infrastructure for telecommunications, including passive optical networks (PON) for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems for fiber-wireless systems and mobile backhaul/fronthaul.
- Visible light communications (VLC) and optical-wireless systems for stationary and mobile links, for indoors, underwater, and vehicle-infrastructure communications.
- Design of optical and electronic techniques for high-speed and robust optical communication systems, including direct- and coherent-detection systems, advanced spectral efficient modulations, digital signal processing techniques, and optical performance monitoring.
- Network planning and resource optimization of elastic optical networks, including wavelength assignment and routing, protection and restoration, traffic grooming, and optical multicast.
Faculty: Lian-kuan CHEN, Calvin CHAN
Related website: Lightwave Communications Laboratory
Cryptography, Security and Privacy
Our general focus is on Applied Cryptography, and Security and Privacy in Cyber Systems. We are interested in devising practical yet provably secure cryptographic schemes for emerging computing paradigms, and for increasingly complex applications involving seemingly conflicting requirements when the participants are mutually untrustful. These include webs, clouds, smart phones, embedded systems, and other distributed computing systems.
On a high level, some recent projects of our group include:
- Cloud computing - searchable encryption, attribute-based encryption, proof of storage, outsourced computation, audit and provenance
- Privacy-enhancing technologies - accountable privacy, anonymous credentials, electronic payment, reputation and revocation, structure-preserving cryptography
- Leakage-resilience - provable security, side-channel information leaks
- Embedded system security - firmware analysis, static analysis, dynamic analysis, symbolic execution, lightweight cryptography
- Smart grid security - tools and methodology to evaluate the security of smart grid components like smart meters, communication protocols and corresponding software, privacy-preserving smart metering and data aggregation
Faculty: Sherman CHOW, Kehuan ZHANG, Wing-cheong LAU, Sze-yiu CHAU, Guoliang Xing, Daoyuan WU
Related websites:
Networking Theory, Internet and Applications
Our department is especially strong in networking research that covers a broad scope from software used to control network activities to hardware for transporting data over wired and wireless channels. We also do research in incentive mechanisms for networks by applying ideas from game theory and economics.
The research on Internet technologies and applications includes three main areas:
- Infrastructure-related issues - broadband technologies, next generation Internet protocols, intelligent routing, quality-of service control, broadcasting and multicasting, multimedia streaming, distributed content caching and routing, intelligent content adaptation.
- Internet applications - on-line social networks, multimedia content distribution and streaming systems (including P2P networking), intelligent bilingual search engines, multiparty video conferencing systems, eLearning systems etc.
- Network Economics - network service provider competitions, new business models for Internet and wireless networks, new incentive mechanism design such as auction, contract, and bargaining for emerging network services, incentives for social networks.
Faculty: Jack LEE, Wing-cheong LAU, Guoliang Xing, Changhong ZHAO
Related websites:
Communications and Information Theory
Our department hosts a world-class research group in Communications and Information Theory and is the birth-place of the field of Network Coding.
This research area covers a wide range of topics in information theory, channel coding theory, switching theory, and performance analysis. Our research deals with the fundamental aspects of information and uses mathematical tools to obtain the limits of data compression, channel coding, network performance, etc. We also design efficient algorithms for related applications.
Faculty: Raymond YEUNG, Chandra NAIR, Pascal O. VONTOBEL, Cheuk-ting LI
Related websites:
- The Institute of Theoretical Computer Science and Communications (ITCSC)
- Institute of Network Coding (INC)
Wireless Communications and Networking
Wireless and Networking research in the Faculty of Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) covers a wide range of areas including peer-to-peer systems, cognitive radio systems, cooperative communications, cellular systems, adaptive transmission and reception, diversity combining techniques, multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technologies, spread spectrum methods, RF/microwave engineering and IC design, Low-temperature Co-fired Ceramic technology (LTCC) / antenna design, ultra wideband (UWB) technologies, media access control (MAC) protocols, mobility management and control algorithms, wireless LAN/Mesh, and ad-hoc/ sensor networking and RFID systems.
Faculty: Soung-chang LIEW, Tat-ming LOK, Angela ZHANG, Henry CHEN
Related websites:
