Research 

Grants @ HKUST

Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) Grants

• 2026 - 2028, Graph-based Indexing for Scalable Maximum Inner-Product Search (grant# 16210625), HK$924,121, Hong Kong Research Grants Council (GRF Scheme). PI. 

• 2024 - 2029, A digital twin for enhancing coastal resilience against extreme storm surges in Hong Kong (grant#: T22-607/24N), HK$62.9M, Research Grants Council (Theme-based Research Scheme). Co-PI.

• 2023 - 2028, High-performance Collaborative Edge Computing Enabling Smart City Applications: Framework and Methodologies (grant#: T43-513/23-N), HK$43.7M, Research Grants Council (Theme-based Research Scheme). Co-PI.

• 2023 - 2028, Strengthening Hong Kong as a Global Financial Center by Enhancing the Overall Regtech Capacity of the Industry and Facilitating the Regulation and Infrastructure Design of CBDC and Digital Assets in Hong Kong (grant#: T35-607/23-N), HK$5.6M, Research Grants Council (Theme-based Research Scheme). Co-I.

• 2023, International Conference on Digital Pathology and Data Intelligence (grant# N_HKUST652/23),  HK$187,410, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) / Research Grants Council (RGC) Joint Research Scheme. PI.

• 2023 - 2025, Predictive Routing Query Processing in Road Networks (grant# 16202722), HK$1,112,037, Hong Kong Research Grants Council (GRF Scheme). PI. 

Industry and Government Grants

• 2025, Knowledge Graph-Based Retrieval Augmented Generation, HK$500K, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI. 

• 2024-2025, Towards Large-Scale Industry Knowledge Graphs Construction, HK1.1M, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI. 

• 2024-2026, Underwater Embodied AI for Environmental Sampling and Monitoring, HK$1M, HKUST Marine Robotics and Blue Economy Technology Grant. Co-PI

• 2024-2026, Research on large-scale model data preprocessing and synthetic data generation techniques, HK$835K, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI. 

• 2024-2026, Effective data quality assessment for multimodal datasets tailored for training large language models, HK$210K, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI.

• 2023 - 2026, 基于大语言模型的数字内容合成技术及数字人示范应用 (grant#: 2023ZD007), RMB 641,580, Nansha District Government of Guangzhou. PI.

• 2023-2024, Research and Applications of Customized Large Language Model for the Telecommunication Industry, HK$2M, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI.

• 2023-2024, Real-Time Traffic Forecasting for Optimized Large-Scale Cargo Handling, HK$500K, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI.

• 2023-2024, Dynamic Financial Knowledge Graph-based Alternative Data Engine for Quantitative Investment, HK$600K, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI.

• 2023-2024, Knowledge Graph-based Anti-Money Laundering Methods, HK$500K, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI.

• 2022 -2023, Knowledge Graph-Based Patent Evaluation, HK$682K, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI.

• 2022-2023, Identification and Root Cause Analysis of Congestions in the Large-scale Cargo Handling System, HK$600K, HKUST-Industry Joint Lab Project. PI.

Large Collaboration Initiatives

• 2024 - 2029, HKUST Joint Lab on Advanced AI Computing, HK$28M. Founding Director.

• 2024 - 2026, HKUST Innovation Lab on  Fundational Software, HK$15M. Founding Director.

• 2023 - 2026, HKUST Joint Lab on Smart Society, HK$12M. Founding Director.

• 2022 - 2026, HKUST-HKPC Joint Lab on Industrial AI and Robotics Research, HK$ 12M, funded by Hong Kong Productivity Council. Founding Director. 

• 2022 - 2027, STEM Professorship and JC STEM Lab of Data Science Foundations, funded by The Hong Kong Government and The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, HK$ 20M. Founding Director.

Grants @ UQ (1999 - 2020)

Australian National Competitive Grants

• 2020 - 2022, Making Spatiotemporal Data More Useful: An Entity Linking Approach (grant# DP200103650), AU$493,000 funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project), with Dr Wen Hua and Dr Jiwon Kim. (relinquished after joining HKUST)

• 2020 -2025, ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (grant# IC200100022), AU$4.88M from ARC + AU$9M from partners, funded by the Australian Research Council (Industrial Transformation Training Centres), Prof Shazia Sadiq (Director), Prof Xiaofang Zhou (Research Director) and other 12 Chief Investigators and 16 partner Investigators. (relinquished after joining HKUST)

• 2019 - 2022, Real-time Analytics on Urban Trajectory Data for Road Traffic Management (grant# LP180100018), AU$330,000 funded by the Australian Research Council (Linkage Project) with AU$150,000 industry support, Dr Jiwon Kim; Professor Xiaofang Zhou; Dr Mehmet Yildirimoglu; Professor Mark Hickman; Mr Edward Beak. (relinquished after joining HKUST)

• 2018-2023, Redback Smart Monitoring Platform (grant# AQPTP01216-17RD1), AU$5.4M, funded by Advance Queensland Platform Technology Program, with Prof Michael Bruenig, Prof Tapan Saha and Associate Professor Stephen Viller). (relinquished after joining HKUST)

• 2017-2019, Managing Data with High Redundancy and Low Value Density (grant# DP170101172), AU$325,000, funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project), with Prof Shazia Sadiq.

• 2015-2017, Indexing Large Video Databases to Support Efficient Query Processing (grant# DP150103008), AU$510,073 funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project), with Dr Yi Yang.

• 2014, FlashLite: a high performance machine for data intensive science (grant# LE140100061), AU$1M funded the Australian Research Council (ARC) plus 1M from industry (Linkage Infrastructure, equipment and Facilities Project),  2014, with Abramson, Prof David A; Zhou, Prof Xiaofang; Bernhardt, Prof Debra J; Zhang, Prof Chengqi; Zhu, Prof Xingquan; Tao, Prof Dacheng; Chen, Dr Ling; Drinkwater, Prof Michael J; Tomlinson, Prof Rodger B; Coppel, Prof Ross L; Gu, A/Prof Yuantong; Burrage, Prof Kevin; Griffiths, Prof Lyn R; Turner, Prof Ian W; Mackey, Prof Brendan G; Du, A/Prof Aijun; Mengersen, Prof Kerrie L; Edwards, Prof David.

• 2104-2016, Declaration, Exploration, Enhancement and Provenance: The DEEP Approach to Data Quality Management Systems (grant#: DP140103171), AU$452,000 funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project), with Dr Zi Huang, Prof Shazia Sadiq, and Dr Divesh Srivastava.

• 2013-2016, Chief Investigator, In-memory Moving Objects Analytics for Real-time Business Applications (grant#: LP130100164), AU$450,000 funded by the Australian Research Council (Linkage Project) and AU$210,000 funded by SAP, with Dr Mohamed Sharaf, Prof Shazia Sadiq, Dr Hoyoung Jeung, Dr Wasim Sadiq.

• 2012-2014, Chief Investigator, Detection of Location Significance from Quality Enhanced Trajectory Data (grant#:DP120102829), AU$330,000, funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project), with A/Prof Shazia Sadiq.

• 2011-2013, Sole Investigator, Making Sense of Trajectory Data: a Database Approach (grant#: DP110103423), AU$300,000, funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project).

• 2009-2011, Chief Investigator,  Analyzing Uncertain Data: Probabilistic Approaches (grant#: DP0987557), AU$340,000, funded by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project), with Prof Xuemin Lin.

• 2008 - 2010, Chief Investigator, Enhancement, Integration and Access Services for Smarter, Collaborative and Adaptive Whole-of-Water-Cycle Management (grant#: LP0882957), AU$360K, funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project (industry partner: Southeast Queensland Healthy Waterways). With Prof Jane Hunter, Prof Yanchun Zhang, Dr Shazia Sadiq and Dr Eva Abal.

• 2008 - 2009, Chief Investigator, Query Feedback Based Integration of Distributed Scientific Data Sources, AU$189K, funded by CSIRO Flagship Program, with Kerry Taylor.

• 2008 - 2010, Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics (ACB), AU$3.3 million, extension and upgrade to ARC Centre for Bioinformatics, funded by the Australian Research Council, with Prof Mark Ragan and others.

• 2006-2007, Chief Investigator, Australian Research Enabling Environment (ARCHER) AU$4.545 million, funded by the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) - Systemic Infrastructure Initiative, with Dr Andrew Treloar (Monash University) and others.

• 2006-2008, Chief Investigator, Efficient Similarity Query Processing in High Dimensional Databases (grant#: DP0663272), AU$210,000, funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project, with Dr HT Shen; Dr D Song; Prof PD Bruza.

• 2006-2008, Chief Investigator, Computing Order Statistics over Data Streams (grant#: DP0666428), AU$315,000, funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project, with Prof Xuemin Lin and Prof Jeffrey X Yu.

• 2006, Chief Investigator, Multimedia Computing, Production, Management and Distribution for HDTV and its Applications (grant#: LE0668542), AU$425,000, funded by the Australian Research Council LIEF Project (Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities), with Prof D. Feng and others.

• 2005-2007, Chief Investigator, Dataset Acquisition, Accessibility and Annotation e-Research Technology Project (DART) AU$3.24 million, funded by the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), with Dr Andrew Treloar (Monash University) and others.

• 2005-2006, Chief Investigator, Infrastructure for large-scale data resource sharing between research institutions - an environmental case study (grant#: SR0567393), AU$133,000, funded by the Australian Research Council, with Prof Maria Orlowska and others.

• 2004-2009, Research Director, ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII) (grant#: RN0459895), AU$1.6 million, funded by the Australian Research Council, with Prof Maria Orlowska and others.

• 2003-2004, participants of the following successful ARC Research Network Seed Funding proposals (under ARC Special Research Initiatives)

  • ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII)

  • ARC Network in Imaging Science and Technology

  • ARC Research Network in Multimedia Technology and Applications (MTA)

• 2003-2008, Chief Investigator, ARC Centre for Bioinformatics (ACB) (grant#: CE0348221), AU$3.96 million, funded by the Australian Research Council, with Prof Mark Ragan and others.

• 2003-2005, Chief Investigator, Multi-resolution Spatial Query Processing (grant#: DP0345710), AU$178,240, funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project (formally known as ARC Large Grant Scheme), with Prof Xuemin Lin and Prof Yanchun Zhang.

• 2003-2005, Chief Investigator, Integrating Database Technologies and Visual Analysis in Bioinformatics for Genome Data (grant#: DP0344488), AU$334,000, funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project, with Prof Phoebe Chen, Prof Kevin Burrage and Prof Mark Ragan.

• 2000, Sole Investigator, Visual Spatial Query Processing, AU$19,000, Australian Research Council (ARC Small).

Industry Grants and Consultancy

• 2004, On-the-fly Spatial Service integration using Web Services, AU$10,000, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency of Queensland.

• 2004-2005, Spatial Information Systems Integration, AU$17,600, funded by Canal Industries and Trading Pty Ltd. 

• 2002, Spatial Semjoins, AU$10,000, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency of Queensland.

• 2002, JMIS System Migration, for the Environmental Protection Agency of Queensland. 

• 2000-2001, Internet-Based Air and Water Quality Data Visualisation, AU$20,000, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency of Queensland.

• 2001, Distributed Enterprise GIS Software Licenses Management, for the Environmental Protection Agency of Queensland.

• 2000-2002, Complex Telecommunication Data Analysis through Data Visualisation and Data Mining,  for Telstra (the largest telecommunication company in Australia), with Prof Maria Orlowska.

Other Grants

• 2012, In-memory mobile data analytics for real-time enterprise applications, AU$4,500, UniQuest First Link grant, with Mohamed Sharaf.

• 2009 - 2013. Managing Data Quality in Next Generation Information Information Infrastructure, AU$640,000, UQ Vice Chancellor's Strategic Fund.

• 2008 - 2009, Data Quality in Web Information Systems, 60,000 (Chinese Yuan), funded by the Open Research Foundation of the National Key Lab for Novel Software Technology, hosted by Nanjing University, China.

• 2006, Multi-Resolution GIS Based on the Object Proxy Model, 30,000 (Chinese Yuan), funded by the Open Research Foundation of the National Key Lab for Software Engineering, hosted by Wuhan University, China.

• 2001, High-Performance Spatial Query Processing System for Distributed Earth Environmental Repositories Connected Through High-Speed Communication Lines, 1,800,000 (Japanese Yen), in collaboration with Prof Masaru Kitsuregawa at the University of Tokyo, funded by the Telecommunication Advancement Organization of Japan.

• 2000, Multi-Resolution Spatial Data Processing, 30,000 (Chinese Yuan), funded by the Open Research Foundation of the National Key Lab for Novel Software Technology, hosted by Nanjing University, China.

• 1999-2000, Spatial Query Optimisation, AU$10,000, funded by the UQ New Staff Startup Grant