Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 2006

Information Sciences 15 leadership of Prof. Andrew Yao, CUHK Professor-at-Large and the first Chinese to win the TuringAward in Computer Science. In the coming two years, the centre will need support to hire a few more professors in security and cryptology as well as research postgraduate students. The centre will have collaborations with the Departments of Mathematics and Biology, and the Faculty of Medicine. It will also liaise with industry for technology transfer. Multimedia Founded in 2005, the Microsoft-CUHK Joint Laboratory for Human-Centric Computing and Interface Technologies, a joint venture between the Faculty of Engineering and MSRA Beijing, is at the core of another strategy of the major area, namely, the building of multimedia into an interdisciplinary strength at CUHK and a world leader in this field. Human- centric technologies ‘humanize’ computer technology by taking care of the information needs and natural communicative patterns of the human user. They endow the computer with the ability to ‘see’, ‘hear’ and ‘sense’ the user and to convey information in personified forms such as synthetic speech, facial expressions and avatar gestures. The Joint Laboratory aims to build cohesion among the core competencies common to CUHK and MSRA, and to develop this cohesion into a research programme that provides infrastructure and inspiration to CUHK faculty, researchers and students. The ultimate target is to establish a Ministry of Education National Key Laboratory in three years’ time. Bioinformatics Research There are plans to launch a Joint Research Programme inBioinformatics. Bioinformatics is the use of computer science, mathematics, and information theory to model and analyse biological systems, especially genomic and molecular data. The interdisciplinary programme will involve, besides computer science and engineering, biology, mathematics, physics, and statistics. A centre will be set up that is devoted to research in bioinformatics and the different participating departments will each hire one or two experts in this area. The aim is to raise the level and impact of bioinformatics research in the region. ‘The government calls for the development of a knowledge-based economy. Our society will benefit tremendously from graduates withexpertise incomputer science. ITresearch will bring progress to Asia or the world by pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge. The internet and internet security issues are very much part of our daily lives. In short, Information Sciences help pave the way to a better life,’ says Prof. Wong Kam-fai, the faculty’s contact person for the Information Sciences, Associate Dean (External Affairs) of the Faculty of Engineering, and professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management. The online version of the Information Sciences brochure is available at www.cuhk. edu.hk/v6/en/cuhk/strategicplan/fivemajor_ is.html .