Research Projects
Computing Sciences, Information Technology and Applied Mathematics
Research Projects
Administrative,
Business and
Social Studies
Medicine,
Dentistry
and Health:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Civil and
Structural
Engineering
Electrical and
Electronic
Engineering
Computing
Sciences,
Information
Technology
and Applied
Mathematics
Mechanical,
Production and
Industrial
Engineering
including
Textiles and
Clothing
RECOGNIZING HAND WRITTEN CHINESE CHARACTERS BY CONTEXTUAL VECTOR QUANTIZATION
To find an effective and efficient means of representing hand writtne Chinese characters for recognition purpose; to apply the Markov Random Field Theory on the general problem of recognizing complex images of great variance.
Investigators: Professor C. Chan (Principal)
Dr. Q. Huo
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1996.09 Completion date: 1999.06
TOWARDS ROBUST AND FLEXIBLE CONTINUOUS PUTONGHUA RECOGNITION
To design a task-independent Putonghua training database suitable for a wide range of vocabularies and applications; to choose a set of basic speech units based on the above task-independent database and how to train the corresponding HMMs to achieve a reasonable task-independent performance; to achieve high performance speech recognition through adaptive system design to quickly meet changing tasks, speakers and speaking environments.
Investigators: Professor C. Chan (Principal)
Dr. Q. Huo
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.09
MULTILINGUAL FONT SERVICE IN X WINDOW SYSTEM
To design a new font service framework in X which is scaleable for cross-platform multilingual support.
Investigator: Dr. H.W. Chan
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1997.07
DYNAMIC MOBILE TERMINAL TRACKING AND LOCATION UPDATE PROTOCOLS FOR CELLULAR NETWORK: DESIGN, ANALYSIS AND IMPLEMENTATION
In the wireless cellular network environment, the mobile computers need to release their wireless connections with the cellular network when communication is no longer needed so as to reduce their battery power consumption and also release the scarce wireless communication bandwidth resource for other computers. However, since mobile users can traverse to a different cell, the wireless communication network needs to track the current location of any mobile users so as to be able to re-establish a connection with them whenever there is a new message arrives that need to be delivered to any mobile users. Although the mobile terminal tracking problem has been studied before, their analyses were too simple to capture the realistic mobile terminal's movement patterns and often, steady state analyses were carried out. Note that since the message arrival rate may be comparable to the mobile terminal's movement rate, therefore, steady state analysis may not be accurate in determining the optimal operating point for any mobile terminal tracking algorithm. A better and more appropriate approach is to analyze any terminal tracking algorithm based on the transient analysis.
Investigators: Dr. H.W. Chan (Principal)
Dr. J.C.S. Lui
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1999.01
MACHINE LEARNING OF FUZZY-ATTRIBUTE GRAPH REPRESENTATION
To develop algorithms to build models and class hierarchy from a set of fuzzy examples for structural pattern recognition. Efficient ways of matching between object in a complex scene and the models and class hierarchy obtained will also be developed
Investigator: Dr. K.P. Chan
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1995.07
A PRINTED CHINESE DOCUMENT RECOGNITION AND TRANSLATION SYSTEM FOR OFFICE AUTOMATION
To build a system that will perform segmentation and recognition on a printed document and translate the document into an English one based on knowledge based translation and human intervention.
Investigator: Dr. K.P. Chan
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Industrial Support Fund, Industry Department of Hong Kong Government
Starting date: 1996.06
DESIGN OF NONUNIFORM PARAUNITARY FILTER BANKS FOR SUBBAND IMAGE CODING
Subband Image cording has been very popular since its introduction. The idea is to decompose the original signal into different frequency components, using a set of filter banks with uniform bandwidth filter banks. However, this approach takes into account neither the frequency distribution of the signal itself, nor the sensitivities of human organs on these signals, Hence nonuniform decomposition of signals is attracting more research interest. We would like to achieve the following: 1. Examination of paraunitary with nonuniform frequency band distributions; 2. Derivation of design algorithms for generalized nonuniform paraunitary filter banks with specified bandwidths and cut-off frequencies; 3. Study of the relationship between decimation radio and bandwidth of the filter banks and the way they are related to the coding performance; 4. Application of the nonuniform filter banks to image coding.
Investigator: Dr. K.P. Chan
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1999.01
NEW INDUCTION TECHNIQUES FOR KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN DATABASES
Knowledge discovery is the nontrivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from data. The project undertakes to apply the new technique "Attribute-Oriented Induction" to new domain of applications. It will be applied to some production databases available locally in Hong Kong for experimental purpose. This research has great application values in area like consumer behaviour study, medical diagnosis, and geographical information system.
Investigators: Dr. D.W.L. Cheung (Principal)
Dr. J. Han
Dr. V.T.Y. Ng
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Computing Science, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1995.10
DISCOVERY AND MAINTENANCE OF ASSOCIATION RULES IN LARGE DATABASES
To design efficient algorithms for mining different types of rules or patterns, and, to update, maintain and manage the rules discovered.
Investigators: Dr. D.W.L. Cheung (Principal)
Dr. J. Han
Dr. V.T.Y. Ng
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Computing Science, Simon Fraser University
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1996.10
TECHNIQUES FOR BUILDING SPACE-EFFICIENT DATA WAREHOUSES
To develop techniques for building space-efficient data warehouses.
Investigator: Dr. D.W.L. Cheung
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.07
MINING ASSOCIATION RULES ON HIGH PERFORMANCE PARALLEL SYSTEMS
To study and develop algorithms and techniques for mining association rules on high performance parallel systems including the following two system paradigms: share-nothing distributed memory parallel system and share-memory parallel system.
Investigators: Dr. D.W.L. Cheung (Principal)
Dr. B.C.M. Kao
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Outstanding Researcher Award, Vice-Chancellor's Development Fund
Starting date: 1998.09
ESTABLISH A DISTRIBUTED HETEROGENEOUS EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT
To develop a network transparent distribute execution environment for a local area network which consist of different types of machines such as IBMPC and Macintosh.
Investigator: Dr. W.H. Cheung
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: The Hong Kong and China Gas Co. Ltd. Research Fund
Starting date: 1991.04
VARIATIONAL PROBLEMS VIA EXTERIOR DIFFERENTIAL SYSTEMS
To generalize Griffiths' formalism of the calculus of variations in one variable via the theory and techniques of exterior differential systems to the case of several variables; and to apply the formalism or its generalizations to solve certain geometrical and/or physical problems.
Investigator: Dr. W.S. Cheung
Department: Mathematics
Starting date: 1988.05
BOUNDED DOMAINS IN N-DIMENSIONAL COMPLEX SPACES
To study the behaviour and properties of certain intrinsic measures on bounded domains in an n-dimensional euclidean space.
Investigators: Dr. W.S. Cheung (Principal)
Professor B. Wong
Department: Mathematics
Starting date: 1991.09
CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS VIA EXTERIOR DIFFERENTIAL SYSTEMS
To further develop the formalism of the Calculus of Variations via Exterior Differential Systems in one and several independent variables; to apply the said formalism to problems arising from differential geometry, mechanics and other related areas.
Investigators: Dr. W.S. Cheung (Principal)
Dr. R.H.F. Chan
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1994.12
A STUDY ON INTEGRAL INEQUALITIES OF SEVERAL VARIABLES
Among various types of inequalities, those in integral form, which are generally known as integral inequalities, are of particular importance because they provide a powerful and effective tool for the study of both qualitative and quantitative properties of solutions of differential and integral equations, which appear in virtually all branches of mathematics and can be regarded as a bridge connecting all areas of mathematics. It is the purpose of this project to discover new and significant integral inequalities, and to sharpen and generalize existing ones in the literature. Such work should provide a stepping stone for those who work on or need to utilize the results of differential and integral equations in their research.
Investigator: Dr. W.S. Cheung
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.07
CANONICAL KAHLER METRICS AND GENERALIZATIONS OF A THEOREM OF K.H. LOOK
To study a far-reaching generalization of Look's Theorem.
Investigators: Dr. W.S. Cheung (Principal)
Mr. B.C.W. Wong
Departments: Mathematics
Biochemistry
Source of funding: RGC Fundable Projects (Block Grant Funded)
Starting date: 1998.11
MULTIRESOLUTION POLYGONAL / SUBDIVISION APPROXIMATION
To address the problem of finding approximations to polygonal curves and planar subdivisions which are important and fundamental constructs in such areas as vision, image processing and pattern recognition, and geographical information systems (GIS).
Investigator: Professor F.Y.L. Chin
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.01
MEDIAL AXIS OF A SIMPLE POLYGON
To investigate the time required to compute the medial axis of a simple polygon. Whether this problem can be solved in linear time is a well-known open problem in the field of computer algorithm design and analysis.
Investigator: Professor F.Y.L. Chin
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.07
LINE ESTIMATOR/STABBING PROBLEMS
Line Estimator and Line Stabbing Problems are related in the sense that, if the points in the line estimation problem are replaced by objects in the line stabbing problem, these two problems should give the same solution (line estimator or stabbing line). Depending on whether vertical or perpendicular distance is used as the error measure between a point and a line in the line estimator problem, the corresponding objects in the line stabbing problem can be vertical line segments or circular disks. We plan to study different versions of these two problems such as maximizing the number or minimizing the error/size of points/objects for approximation/stabbing, especially in the following two aspects. 1. In normal practice, some data points might be erroneous. We propose to study the "robust" line estimator problem by allowing some outlying erroneous points to be ignored in the approximation process. 2. When the given points are ordered, the problem is to find an "ordered" line estimator which, besides minimizing the errors of the points, also approximates the order of the points.
Investigator: Professor F.Y.L. Chin
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.12
OPERATIONAL RESEARCH (OR) AND COMPUTING
To investigate applied operational research such as optimization, mathematical modelling, facility location-allocation, scheduling and their computations; and mathematical methodologies such as discrete optimization, linear programming, networks and graphs.
Investigator: Dr. S.C.K. Chu
Department: Mathematics
Starting date: 1985.09
STRONG CRYPTOGRAPHIC INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
To promote the competitiveness of Hong Kong in the area of electronic commerce and applied cryptography.
Investigators: Dr. L.C.K. Hui (Principal)
Professor F.Y.L. Chin
Dr. K.P. Chow
Professor G. Marsaglia
Dr. W.W. Tsang
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Statistics, Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The Florida State University, U.S.A.
Source of funding: Industrial Support Fund, Industry Department of Hong Kong Government
Starting date: 1998.09
PRIOR FEEDBACK: A BAYESIAN TOOL FOR MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION OF CONTINUOUS DENSITY HIDDEN MARKOV MODEL FOR SPEECH RECOGNITION
To adopt Bayesian framework to develop a new algorithm for ML estimation of CDHMM parameters to address the two issues 1) EM algorithm can only guarantee to converge to a fixed point and/or a local optimal point, 2) the algorithm has a linear convergence property; by taking advantage of the unique requirements for HMM-based speech recognition applications; to implement the proposed algorithm, as a separate module, into a state-of-the-art commercial product - HTK (HMM tool kit); to verify the characteristics and efficacy of the proposed technique in a series of well-designed experiments.
Investigator: Dr. Q. Huo
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.08
CLUSTERING OF SYMMETRIC MULTIPROCESSORS FOR DISTRIBUTED PARALLEL PROCESSING
To build a multprocessor testbed at University of Hong Kong to perform basic research in computer architecture, parallel processing, Internet searching, and distributed mutimedia applications.
Investigators: Professor K. Hwang (Principal)
Dr. P.Y.S. Cheung
Dr. F.C.M. Lau
Dr. X.L. Lin
Dr. C.L. Wang
Dr. N.H.C. Yung
Departments: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.09
EFFICIENT DATA STRUCTURE AND ALGORITHMS FOR WWW INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Currently available Web tools suffer a number of limitations in retrieving the most up-to-date and relevant information that a user is interested. The goal of this research project is to design and analyze efficient data structures and algorithms that support the implementation of an intelligent Web tool that can discover the most updated and the most relevant information to its user with the least amount of user effort and system resources required.
Investigators: Dr. B.C.M. Kao (Principal)
Dr. D.W.L. Cheung
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.10
OPTIMAL MODEL REDUCTION VIA STATE-SPACE PROJECTIONS
To develop an optimal model reduction theory based on the parametrization of stable low-order projections of high-order linear systems; to implement the optimal model reduction theory through efficient and reliable numerical algorithms for some common error measures; to extend the approach to large-scale composite systems and bilinear systems.
Investigators: Dr. J. Lam (Principal)
Dr. W.Y. Yan
Professor G.H. Yang
Departments: Mechanical Engineering
Northeaster University, Shenyang, People's Republic of China
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.01
ANALYSIS AND ROBUST CONTROL OF UNCERTAIN DESCRIPTOR SYSTEMS
To develop robust stability and stabilizability theory for uncertain descriptor systems based on generalized Lyapunov and Riccati equations; to develop H(infinite) control theory for uncertain descriptor systems by using generalized state-space methods; to establish robustness margins of the impulsive properties of descriptor systems by introducing a general notion of distance in generalized state-space; to design robust pole assignment methods for uncertain descriptor systems by utilizing linear matrix equalities and inequalities.
Investigators: Dr. J. Lam (Principal)
Dr. D. Ho
Dr. Q.L. Zhang
Departments: Mechanical Engineering
Mathematics, City University of Hong Kong
Mathematics, Northeastern University, People's Republic of China
Source of funding: RGC Fundable Projects (Block Grant Funded)
Starting date: 1997.12 Completion date: 1998.09
DYNAMIC PATTERN MATCHING
To design more efficient algorithms for matching a set of dynamically changing patterns.
Investigator: Dr. T.W. Lam
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1997.07
ON THE CONSENSUS OF EVOLUTIONARY TREES
To investigate the complexity of several open problems arised from the computation of the consensus of evolutionary trees.
Investigators: Dr. T.W. Lam (Principal)
Dr. H.F. Ting
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.09
MESHES WITH EXPRESS LINKS (MEL)
To study how the popular mesh architecture for parallel computing may be enhanced using extra point-to-point links.
Investigator: Dr. F.C.M. Lau
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hung Hing Ying Physical Sciences Research Fund
Starting date: 1997.01 Completion date: 1998.12
DYNAMIC LOAD BALANCING USING PREEMPTIVE PROCESS MIGRATION IN A NETWORK OF WORKSTATIONS
To study the rather intriguing problem of preemptive process migration in UNIX-based LAN environments; to build a practical system incorporating our solutions to the problem.
Investigators: Dr. F.C.M. Lau (Principal)
Professor K. Hwang
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.09
THE LOAD DISTRIBUTION PROBLEM IN PARALLEL COMPUTERS
To design algorithms that can perform the load distribution task in optimal time for different interconnection topologies.
Investigator: Dr. F.C.M. Lau
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.07
FAST ALGORITHMS FOR INFORMATION DISSEMINATION IN PARALLEL COMPUTERS
This is mainly a theoretical study. The purpose is to come up with good solutions to the gossiping problem (GP) for the mesh/torus topology. In connection with the GP, we propose a new problem called the k-to-all broadcast (kTAB) problem and would like to obtain some initial solutions for it in this project. Since the token distribution problem (TDP) is somewhat related to the GP, we would like also to try to apply solutions to the GP to solving the TDP.
Investigator: Dr. F.C.M. Lau
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.09
BOUNDS FOR SMALL SOLUTIONS OF SOME DIOPHANTINE EQUATIONS
To modify some new ideas and techniques developed recently by Heath-Brown and J.-R. Chen to obtain a good numerical bound for B.; to obtain good numerical bounds for some constants in several closely related problems.
Investigator: Professor M.C. Liu
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1996.09
ON SOME GENERALIZED GOLDBACH PROBLEMS
To develop the recently known techniques applied in A. Baker problems and to obtain parallel generalizations of the Linnik-Gallagher results.
Investigator: Professor M.C. Liu
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.09
ADDITIVE EQUATIONS INVOLVING PRIME NUMBERS
To investigate some new quantitative problems in (1) Almost Goldback Problems: to obtain a good numerical lower bound for the number of powers of 2 in the representation problem on sums of 4 squares of prime numbers or on similar sums involving prime numbers. (2) Baker's Problem: to obtain a good numerical upper bound for an important constant called the bakers constant in the case when all constants involved in the bound for small prime solutions are effectively computable.
Investigators: Professor M.C. Liu (Principal)
Professor T.Z. Wang
Departments: Mathematics
Mathematics, Henan University, People's Republic of China
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.07
EFFICIENT DATA MINING FOR ELECTRONIC COMMERCE WITH GENETIC ALGORITHMS AND NEURAL NETS
(1) Devise an intelligent indexing scheme for retrieval of company information database on the Worldwild Web using a synthesis of genetic algorithms and neural network techniques. (2) Develop a network architecture of company information that would assist efficient keyword search for customers shopping on the internet. Also develop a network architecture of customer information for companies locating customers on the internet. (3) Develop a library to store keywords entered by an individual user, which will be used to efficiently locate the point of search for the future search of the user.
Investigator: Dr. B.L.F. Mak
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1999.03
COMBINATORIAL METHODS FOR FREE ALGEBRAS
To study free algebras is very important in combinatorial ring theory. One of the interesting problems in this field is to describe combinatorial properties of automorphism group of this algebras (polynomial algebras, free associative algebras, free non-associative algebras, free Lie algebras and superalgebras, etc.): recognizing of automorphisms, description of primitive elements, test elements, and so on. Any algebra could be presented as a quotient algebra of a corresponding free algebra. Hence combinatorial methods and results about free algebras and their ideals could be used to study algebras given by generators and defining relations. It gives a possibility to construct algorithms for symbolic computations in different classes of algebras. By using these algorithms in systems of computer algebra one may find solutions for some important problems.
Investigators: Dr. A. Mikhalev (Principal)
Dr. J.T. Yu
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1999.04
CONES OF RATIONAL CURVES AND COMPLEX STRUCTURE
To study the complex structure of Fano manifolds by analyzing their varieties of minimal rational tangents.
Investigator: Professor N. Mok
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.12
HOLOMORPHIC MAPPINGS ON COMPACT QUOTIENTS OF BOUNDED SYMMETRIC DOMAINS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF CERTAIN HOLOMORPHIC GEODESIC CYCLES
To study, the case of rank >= 2, the rigidifying effect of the geometric structures to the complex geometry of X. Essential to our pursuit of both circles of problems will be the use of certain locally homogeneous fibre bundles Ck over X, l <= k < r, called k-th characteristic bundles, which are subbundles of the projectivized tangent bundle PTx definable in terms of the geometric structures. One central theme of our approach will be the study of intersections of anlaytic subvarieties of PTx of complementary or excessive dimensions with highest characteristic bundles C. Another theme is to exploit the algebro-geometric characterization of C subset PTx as the precise base locus of some complete linear system.
Investigator: Professor N. Mok
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1999.01
COMPUTATIONAL AND STATISTICAL METHODS FOR DATA MINING APPLICATIONS
Data mining attempts to find structure in large and complex data set. This structure can take a variety of forms. It includes finding trends, most important parameters, clusters and holes. Thus different approaches are used. The purpose of this research is to develop new methods and algorithms for data mining applications. This research project includes the following topics. (i) We will develop highly efficient clustering algorithms for large data set containing both numeric and categorical attributes. Mathematical analysis and convergence of clustering algorithms are concerned. (ii) We will develop highly speciallized solvers for adaptive regression and generalized additive models using computational tools from linear algebra and graph theory. (iii) We will investigate temporal data mining techniques to find and characterize interesting sequential patterns from temporal data sets. (iv) Parallel version of our methods will be implemented on existing parallel computing platforms in the Univeristy of Hong Kong.
Investigator: Dr. K.P. Ng
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1997.11
PARALLEL ITERATIVE METHODS IN LARGE SCALE SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING
To design, analyze and implement parallel numerical algorithms for solving large systems of equations in scientific computing, specifically, in the area of parallel iterative methods for solving partial differential equations on parallel computers.
Investigator: Dr. K.P. Ng
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.04
MATHEMATICAL THINKING AND HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS
Inspired by Leibniz' saying that "the art of discovery be promoted and its method known through illustrious examples', an attempt is made to develop undergraduate teaching material out of selected excerpts from memoirs of great mathematicians in the past, with emphasis on mathematical concepts involved, especially their evolution, and important aspects of mathematical thinking.
Investigator: Professor M.K. Siu
Department: Mathematics
Starting date: 1987.01
AUTOCORRELATION PROPERTIES OF BINARY SEQUENCES AND ARRAYS
Binary sequences and arrays find important applications in communication science and electrical engineering. In particular, their autocorrelation properties are of interest, and such study is intimately related to various other topics in combinatorial mathematics and abstract algebra. As the subject is vast, the study has a more specific (short-term) objective, viz. to study sequences with special form of auto-correlation function (periodic or aperiodic), especially their two-dimensional analogues.
Investigator: Professor M.K. Siu
Department: Mathematics
Starting date: 1987.02
THE ROLE OF PROOF IN MATHEMATICS
The project attempts to answer such questions as: what role does proof play in mathematics? Rigour vs. intuition? What sort of proof will enhance understanding? How should proof be treated in the teaching of mathematics? Is proof a way to discover new results or a mere verification? etc.
Investigator: Professor M.K. Siu
Department: Mathematics
Starting date: 1988.01
TRADITIONAL CHINESE MATHEMATICS IN A BROADER HISTORICAL CONTEXT
A better perspective on traditional Chinese mathematics can only be gained when its development is viewed against a broader socio-cultural background. Through careful document analysis we try to examine this issue.
Investigators: Professor M.K. Siu (Principal)
Dr. A.K. Volkov
Department: Mathematics
Starting date: 1997.05 Completion date: 1999.05
STUDIES ON THE COMMUNICATION COMPLEXITY
To develop techniques for deriving lower bounds on communication complexity; to design protocols with low communication complexity for some important distributed computing problems.
Investigators: Dr. H.F. Ting (Principal)
Dr. T.W. Lam
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1995.09
DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF APPROXIMATION ALGORITHMS
To develop approximation algorithms for optimization problems which find important applications in other practical research areas; to develop approximation algorithms for the PathCovering problem and the Maximum Independent Set problems; to study other important NP-complete optimization problem; to study the limit of "approximability" of these problems, i.e. the best possible performance ratio an approximation algorithms for these problems can achieved.
Investigator: Dr. H.F. Ting
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: RGC Fundable Projects (Block Grant Funded)
Starting date: 1997.12 Completion date: 1998.09
THE MEAN SQUARE FORMULA FOR THE RIEMANN ZETA-FUNCTION
To study the asymptotic and oscillartory behaviour of E(T), the error term in the mean square formula for the Riemann zeta-function on the critical line. Similar problems for certain well-known error terms in analytic number theory will also be studied.
Investigator: Dr. K.M. Tsang
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1995.07
REAL TIME RENDERING OF HUGE VOLUME DATA USING WAVELET MULTIRESOLUTION RESPRESENTATION
To apply level of detail control on such a workstation so that huge volume data of more than 1 giga voxels can be rendered in real time.
Investigators: Dr. W.W. Tsang (Principal)
Professor Z. Tang
Dr. W.P. Wang
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Computer Science, Tsinghua University, People's Republic of China
Source of funding: RGC Fundable Projects (Block Grant Funded)
Starting date: 1997.12 Completion date: 1998.09
SAD_FACT: A STRUCTURED ANALYSIS AND DESIGN FRAMEWORK USING ALGEBRAIC SEMANTICS AND CATEGORY THEORY
To formulate a unified theoretical framework for the structured analysis and design models using initial algebra semantics and category theory.
Investigator: Dr. T.H. Tse
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Association of Commonwealth Universities
Committee on Research and Conference Grants
The Hong Kong and China Gas Co. Ltd. Research Fund
Starting date: 1986.06 Completion date: 1998.12
COD: A COMMUNICATING OBJECTS DESIGN MODEL
To formulate a theoretical framework for object-oriented analysis and design methodologies using the process algebra Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP).
Investigators: Dr. T.H. Tse (Principal)
Dr. J. Jacob
Dr. F.C.M. Lau
Mr. K.R.P.H. Leung
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Computer Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
The University of York, U.K.
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1994.07
INTEGRATING THE STRUCTURED SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT MODELS: A FORMAL APPROACH
To formulate a unified theoretical framework for the structured systems development models. This project is one of the series of projects of the software engineering group, to bridge the gap between popular graphical methods and formal methods in software engineering.
Investigator: Dr. T.H. Tse
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1996.07
TESTS: TOWARDS EFFECTIVE SUBDOMAIN TESTING STRATEGIES
To provide a fundamental understanding of software testing, particularly subdomain testing; to reduce the cost of software testing; to improve the quality and reliability of the software thus produced; to dispel the stigma often related with the presence of bugs in popular software; to provide software testers with effective testing tools.
Investigators: Dr. T.H. Tse (Principal)
Dr. T.Y. Chen
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Computer Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.09
TACCLE: OBJECT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE TESTING AT THE CLASS AND CLUSTER LEVELS
To provide techniques for class-level testing, thereby detecting problems in interactions among methods within a class of objects; to provide techniques for cluster-level testing, thereby detecting problems in interactions among objects of different classes; to provide software testers with an integrated testing methodology and effective testing tools; to improve on the quality and reliability of the software thus produced.
Investigators: Dr. T.H. Tse (Principal)
Dr. T.Y. Chen
Professor Y.C. Huo
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Computer Science, Jinan University, People's Republic of China
Computer Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Source of funding: RGC Fundable Projects (Block Grant Funded)
Starting date: 1998.11
STUDY OF GENERALIZED NUMERICAL RANGES AND GENERALIZED NUMERICAL RADII
To study and to obtain new results on generalized numerical ranges and generalized numerical radii of matrices and linear operators.
Investigator: Dr. N.K. Tsing
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1996.11
DEVELOPING USER MODEL-BASED INTELLIGENT AGENTS
To develop user model-based intelligent agents that can provide guidance and assistance in fast-paced and information-rich computer tasks.
Investigators: Dr. A.H. Vera (Principal)
Dr. J.K. Rosenblatt
Departments: Psychology
Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1996.09 Completion date: 1999.02
AN INDEX FOR THE XIAN FO TONG YUAN BY ZHAO YOUQIN
To prepare index of the Xian Fo Tong Yuan ([A Discourse] on the Common Origins of [the Teacings of] Immortals and Buddhas) [Zhao 1990], a treatise on inner alchemy written by Zhao Youqin (1271-?), a famous Chinese alchemist, astronomer and mathematician, one of the patriarchs of the Quan Zhan school.
Investigator: Dr. A.K. Volkov
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hang Seng Bank Golden Jubilee Education Fund for Research
Starting date: 1997.07
CHINESE SCIENCE BEYOND CHINA: A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF CHINESE AND VIETNAMESE MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC TREATISES FOUND IN VIETNAM
To prepare a preliminary description of the ancient and medieval scientific books found in Vietnam; to analyse the above-mentioned Toan phap dai thanh by Luong The Vinh written in the 15th century, as well as other mathematical treatises, in order to explore the conceptual links between Vietnamese and Chinese mathematical traditions; to purchase copies of microfilms of the most representative books or their fragments found in the libraries.
Investigator: Dr. A.K. Volkov
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hang Seng Bank Golden Jubilee Education Fund for Research
Starting date: 1998.07
A CONCORDANCE TO THE SHU SHU JI YI
To publish the concordance to the Shu shu ji yi, together with a critical edition of the text.
Investigator: Dr. A.K. Volkov
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hang Seng Bank Golden Jubilee Education Fund for Research
Starting date: 1999.04
RUN-TIME SUPPORT FOR IRREGULAR APPLICATIONS ON CLUSTER OF WORKSTATIONS
To develop a portable library to support irregularly structured computation in scientific applications on cluster of workstations.
Investigator: Dr. C.L. Wang
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1995.11
HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING FOR IRREGULARLY STRUCTURED PROBLEMS ON DISTRIBUTED-MEMORY MACHINES
To develop algorithmic techniques and portable implementations on distributed-memory machines for a broad collection of problems with unstructured computations.
Investigator: Dr. C.L. Wang
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1996.09
A NEW MPI-JAVA INTERFACE FOR DISTRIBUTED MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS
To establish a low-latency and high-bandwidth message-passing layer on a networked high-performance computing platform to support distributed multimedia computations.
Investigators: Dr. C.L. Wang (Principal)
Professor K. Hwang
Dr. F.C.M. Lau
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1997.09
JESSICA: JAVA-ENABLED SINGLE SYSTEM IMAGE ARCHITECTURE
To develop a single system image (SSI) architecture that would make a collection of connected machines appear to users as a single Java-ready computing resource.
Investigators: Dr. C.L. Wang (Principal)
Dr. F.C.M. Lau
Dr. Z.W. Xu
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
National Center for Intelligent Computing Systems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, People's Republic of China
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.09
AN ALGEBRAIC METHOD OF COMPUTING INTERSECTION OF QUADRIC SURFACES
To investigate efficient algorithms of computing the quadric surface intersection curve (QSIC).
Investigator: Dr. W.P. Wang
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: RGC Fundable Projects (Block Grant Funded)
Starting date: 1997.12 Completion date: 1998.09
SPEEDUP TECHNIQUES IN VIRTUAL REALITY DISPLAY SYSTEM
To investigate various speedup techniques in virtual reality display system.
Investigator: Dr. W.P. Wang
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.07
COMPUTING INTERSECTIONS OF QUADRIC SURFACES
Surface modeling is an important part of any geometric modeling system. A basic operation in surface modeling is to compute a space curve given as the intersection of two surfaces. A majority of the surfaces used for geometric modeling, especially for designing mechanical parts, are quadric surfaces, which include spheres, cones, and cylinders as special cases. The goal of this research is to study algorithms of computing intersection of quadric surfaces and the applications of these algorithms to geometric modeling.
Investigator: Dr. W.P. Wang
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.09
THE JACOBIAN CONJECTURE
The 50-year-old conjecture states that a polynomial mapping between complex n-dimensional spaces whose Jacobian is non-zero constant has an inverse which is also given by a polynomial mapping. In general dimension, the conjecture is known to be true when the mapping is quadratic. In two-dimension, the conjecture has been verified when the polynomials of the given mapping have degree less than or equal to 100. There are partial answers when the degrees of the polynomials satisfy some further conditions, e.g. when one of the degrees has at most two prime factors. Some results can be obtained by elementary method, e.g. the theorem of Nakai and Baba, which includes the case when one of the degrees is 4. One of the aims in the project is to investigate the use of Newton polygons in obtaining these special cases. The possibility of using complex analytic methods is also considered.
Investigator: Dr. P.P.W. Wong
Department: Mathematics
Starting date: 1987.09
FINANCIAL DIGITAL LIBRARY AND INTELLIGENT AGENTS
To create an internet-based financial digital library to dramatically improve the searching and retrieval of financial information, such as, annual reports, stock prices, foreign currency exchange rates, and so on, over the internet.
Investigator: Dr. C.C. Yang
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1996.11
TOLERANCE DESIGN USING CONSTRAINT NETWORKS
To ensure that the functional requirement tolerance, Y, is met; to determine a set of feasible entity tolerance, X1, X2, ..., Xn, and fulfill the functional requirement.
Investigator: Dr. C.C. Yang
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.04
COLOR IMAGE RETRIEVAL AND VISUAL THESAURUS
To develop a technique that effectively utilizes the chromatic features in color images based on the hue and saturation components for color image retrieval; to develop a technique that utilizes the luminance component of color image to retrieve the textural features of color images; to develop visual thesaurus based on Kohonen's self-organizing map to assist users in retrieving relevant images by categorizing color images on a two dimensional image map; to explore the application of such color image retrieval system to geographic information systems. Applications on medical images will also be explored; to develop a large-scale color image retrieval system using the super computer in the University of Hong Kong.
Investigators: Dr. C.C. Yang (Principal)
Professor V.O.K. Li
Dr. J.C.H. Yen
Departments: Computer Science and Information Systems
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.09
COLLISION DETECTION FOR CONVEX OBJECTS
To devise efficient algorithms for detecting collisions between 3D convex objects in dynamic simulation applications.
Investigators: Dr. S.M. Yiu (Principal)
Dr. W.P. Wang
Department: Computer Science and Information Systems
Source of funding: RGC Fundable Projects (Block Grant Funded)
Starting date: 1998.11
A RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR DECODING
To find a shortest-length algorithm of SLSR for multiple sequences with different lengths; to determine the equivalence of different SLSR algorithms; to construct the idea VALPOL (n) when n>2; to feasibly calculate the generator for combined LFSR multi-sequences.
Investigator: Dr. J.T. Yu
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1994.11
A MATRIX PROBLEM
To solve a specific matrix problem and use the result to attack the problem of tame-ness of quadratic polynomial automorphisms.
Investigator: Dr. J.T. Yu
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1996.07
RECOGNIZING AUTOMORPHISMS OF POLYNOMIAL ALGEBRAS
To study the long-standing Jacobian conjecture formulated by the German mathematician O. Keller in 1939; to determine all test polynomials of the polynomial algebras.
Investigator: Dr. J.T. Yu
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: RGC Fundable Projects (Block Grant Funded)
Starting date: 1997.12 Completion date: 1998.09
ATTACKING THE CONJECTURES OF EXISTENCE OF NON-TAME AUTOMORPHISMS FOR POLYNOMIAL AND FREE ASSOCIATIVE ALGEBRAS
To work on two well-known conjectures in the theory of algebraic automorphisms. One of them, which is due to P.M. Cohn, claims that there are automorphisms of a free associative algebra K<xl, x2, ..., xn> (n>2) that are not tame, i.e., are indecomposable in a product of elementary automorphisms of the form xl to xl+u(x2, ...,xn), xi to xi, i>l). A similar conjecture for polynormial algebras $K[xl, x2, ..., xn] due to M. Nagata, is significant also from the point of view of algebraic geometry.
Investigators: Dr. J.T. Yu (Principal)
Dr. V. Shpilrain
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1998.07
TEST ELEMENTS, RETRACTS AND AUTOMORPHIC ORBITS OF ALGEBRAIC SYSTEMS
To solve the three main problems for some algebraic systems, in particular, for free groups, polynomial algebras, free Lie algebras and some relatively free algebras.
Investigator: Dr. J.T. Yu
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.08
AN ELEMENTERY APPROACH TO WAVELETS WITH APPLICATIONS TO IMAGE PROCESSING
To develop an effective and engineering-friendly approach for discrete wavelets to enhance both the theory and the applications of image processing.
Investigator: Dr. S.P. Yung
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Committee on Research and Conference Grants
Starting date: 1996.07
GRAPH COLORING: THEORY, ALGORITHMS, AND APPLICATIONS
To investigate the positive and negative aspects of graph coloring problems.
Investigator: Dr. W. Zang
Department: Mathematics
Source of funding: Hong Kong Research Grants Council
Starting date: 1998.01
 |
 |
 |