Prof. Chen, with his intelligent System Networking (iSING) lab team, who are helping to devise the technology infrastructure behind Hong Kong’s smart city applications. 19 IN FOCUS The research is seeking to reduce waiting time and tra c jams through smart bus scheduling, flexible rearrangement of tra c lanes during rush hour as well as predictions of passenger hot spots for taxi dispatch. Prof. Chen’s own journey to Hong Kong and HKUST was one driven by hard work and excellence. He was one of only two students in his junior middle school to gain entrance to a prestigious provincial senior high school, and from there he went on to take a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, the capital of Anhui. In , he started doctoral studies in computer science at Northwestern University in Chicago, US, and a year later read one of the rst papers focused on data centers and cloud computing. He immediately recognized the emerging eld’s huge signi cance and decided to make it his main research focus. In , he undertook a three-month internship at Beijing’s Microso Research Lab, inspiring him to write a paper on data centers when he returned to the US. A er working non-stop on the article for months, even during holidays, he was accorded the satisfaction of seeing it accepted as a Best Paper candidate at ACM SIGCOMM , the most prestigious conference in the eld – and renowned for its low acceptance rate for papers. In , he was awarded a PhD from Northwestern University, joining HKUST the same year. At SENG, Prof. Chen has continued to thrive, initiating his own lab and pursuing cutting-edge research in relation to data centers and cloud computing. This has seen him keep up his pioneering contributions to ACM SIGCOMM, with two papers accepted to the conference – the rst such papers generated from Hong Kong. Among the challenges he faces – and a major di erence with theoretical research – is the need to devote enormous amounts of time to building a real system involving numerous computers. “It could take two to three years to build one system for one paper,” he explained. However, the knowledge gained from such system building has been put to good use. Together with students in his laboratory, he has engaged in research on hardware, so ware design, theories, and implementation and been rewarded by seeing their designs adopted by companies including Google, Huawei, and Nvidia. Such work has also laid invaluable groundwork for his current RGC research and smart-city AI computing hub for Hong Kong. He now anticipates that the platform will be open to HKUST faculty later this year and to all local universities by . In the years ahead, he looks forward to even greater impact. “It will ultimately be adopted by the whole city,” he said. Sharing AI insights with top global minds In November , Prof. Chen Kai was invited to give a keynote speech at the Young Scientists session on arti cial intelligence at the eminent rd World Laureates Forum in Shanghai. The annual forum, organized by the World Laureates Association, brings together top global scienti c minds, drawing over Nobel laureates in . A series of Young Scientists Forums, held alongside, enable exchange among rising talents worldwide. Also participating in the three-day Young Scientists gathering was fellow School of Engineering faculty member Prof. Matthew MCKAY, Electronic & Computer Engineering and Chemical & Biological Engineering, who has made signi cant contributions to computational immunology and spoke at a separate session on public health and the economy on learning from the COVID- pandemic, and two academics from HKUST’s School of Science. Over Young Scientists in total took part.
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