Major Initiatives
The department has several major initiatives that have received millions of funding, and have made significant contributions to the research field and the community.
AoE in Network Coding (2010-2017, total funding: $103 million)
Network Coding, a cross-disciplinary subject currently under heavy research at leading universities and research institutes around the world, was started at the IE Department in the late 1990's. In 2009, we were awarded an Area of Excellence grant by the University Grant Committee of HKSAR to establish the Institute of Network Coding at CUHK. This is the largest research project in engineering that has ever been funded in Hong Kong. The project aims to sustain our global leadership in the field by building a world-class research team with comprehensive expertise covering all areas of network coding. We also plan to collaborate with the industry to develop technologies based on network coding.
IP Multicast and UTV (2000-2003, $8.546 million)
The Hong Kong IP Multicast Initiative, funded by the Innovation and Technology Commission and private companies with a total budget of HK$8.6M, aims to jumpstart the local IT industry to take advantage of the emerging IP multicast technologies. The goal is to improve the existing system and to incubate new network services and applications to exploit benefits of IP multicast. As an application, the UTV (University Television Station) was launched in the Chinese University of Hong Kong to demonstrate the technologies and applications.
AoE in IT (1999-2005, total funding: over $51 million)
AoE-IT has been established with the mission to assist the transformation of the HKSAR into an IT society through active promotion of IT research and development, and education of direct relevance. The programme has so far established two physical sites called Media World (in Engineering Building and in Lady Shaw Building) to test and to demonstrate to the outside world our latest IT prototypes.
Hong Kong School Net (1994 onwards, funding over $60 million)
Hong Kong School Net is the leading research and development team in Hong Kong developing innovative Internet-based education technologies. It has received over $30 million funding to develop the Hong Kong Cyber Campus, offering Internet services and applications to over 800 schools, and another $31.9 million funding to develop the Hong Kong Education City, which has become the most popular and largest education portal in Hong Kong. Recently, School Net partners with Hutchison Global Crossing and Easeful Strategies Limited to develop the Hong Kong Family Net, a comprehensive, healthy broadband Internet service for families. It also launched NetPlan V a network enhancement and support plan for schools in Hong Kong.
