Recruitment of PhD Students for Interdisciplinary Research in AI to Advance Well-being and Society

Prof. Victor OK Li and Dr. Jacqueline CK Lam of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong are recruiting PhD students for Sept. 2020 admission. We are looking for candidates interested in AI and big data analytics, and their applications to important societal problems such as air pollution and public health. If you are interested, please send your detailed resume and research interests to Prof. Victor OK Li at vli@eee.hku.hk. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an online interview.

The international research team (see above for some members) led by Prof. Li (5th from left) and Dr. Lam (6th from left), with participants from Cambridge University, MIT, CalTech, and Tsinghua performs interdisciplinary research employing AI and big data technologies to address important societal problems. We have recently won a HKD50M grand challenge project that utilizes big data and AI technologies to estimate fine-grained air pollution throughout an urban area. Synchronized and personalized data are collected and analyzed, so as to develop tools to help citizens avoid bad air for better health management.

Prof Li and Dr. Lam direct the HKU-Cambridge AI to Advance Well-being and Society Research Platform (AI-WiSe), which supports collaboration in interdisciplinary research between HKU and The University of Cambridge.

Opportunities to Study in Cambridge for Enrolling in PhD Programme at AI-WiSe: Our PhD students have the opportunity to enroll in the HKU-Cambridge PhD Pathway, the first of its kind in Asia, which allows our PhD students to study at Cambridge for one year and obtain an MPhil in Technology Policy from Cambridge plus a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from HKU. Check the following link that showcases our PhD student’s experience of undertaking an MPhil degree at Cambridge under the HKU-Cambridge PhD Pathway: HKU-Cambridge PhD Pathway

Opportunities for Student Visits at Prestigious Overseas Universities: Our PhD students have visited MIT, CalTech, UC Berkeley, USC, NYU, Cambridge and Imperial College. Our top students have been offered positions by Facebook Research and Google.

Fellowships: There are 3 levels of stipends for successful candidates, depending on your academic achievements:

1. Hong Kong PhD Fellowship (HKPF) – HK$25,100/month + a conference/travel allowance of HK$12,600/year (effective July 1 2018).
2. University Postgraduate Fellowship (UPF) – HK$18,118/month (effective July 1 2018).
3. Postgraduate Studentship (PGS) – HK$16,660/month (effective July 1 2018).

Track Record of HKPF Awards: In the past few years, students from our research group have won 11 HKPF awards.

We look forward to receiving your resumes and research interests.

Interdisciplinary Researchers Covering AI/Visualization and Apps Development/Affective Computing/Health Analytics/Air Pollution Sensing

We are all entitled to live with dignity in a clean environment. With AI and big data technologies, it is possible to collect complex, heterogeneous, high resolution, personalized, and synchronized urban air pollution, human activity, health condition, well-being, and behavioral data, enabling the generation of smart (real-time and interactive), personal alert and advice to improve the health and well-being of individual citizens. HKU and Cambridge colleagues, working together in HKU-Cambridge Clean Energy and Environment Research Platform and HKU-Cambridge AI to Advance Well-being and Society Research Platform (AI-WiSe), have recently won a major grand challenge grant on AI and Air Pollution Monitoring and Health Management. The project addresses five major challenges.

1. FIRST, urban air quality data is sparse, rendering it difficult to provide timely personalized alert and advice.
2. SECOND, collected data, especially those involving human inputs, such as health perception, are often missing and erroneous.
3. THIRD, data collected are heterogeneous, and highly complex, not easily comprehensible to facilitate individual or collective decision-making.
4. FOURTH, the causal relationships between personal air pollutants exposure (specifically PM(2.5,10) and NO2) and personal health conditions, and health (well-being) perception, of young asthmatics and young healthy citizens, are yet to be established.
5. FIFTH, one must determine if information and advice provided can effect behavioral change.

To overcome these challenges, we are recruiting like-minded researchers who share our vision in conducting high-impact interdisciplinary research on AI with applications on air pollution monitoring and health management, and in particular, expertise on AI, machine learning, mobile sensing, sensor placement, missing data recovery, overcoming human-in-the-loop data collection, data visualization, health and well-being longitudinal studies to provide advice to citizens, mobile data security and privacy, causality between air pollution and health, and information intervention studies.

We are looking for:

• Research Assistants (PhD students, or visiting students) with a salary of USD 26,000 per year.
• Research Associates (Postdoctoral Research Fellows), with a salary of USD 42,000 per year.

(HK income tax is a flat rate of 15%)

If you are interested, please send your CV to Prof. Victor O.K. Li (vli@eee.hku.hk), Director, AI-WiSe, or to Dr. Jacqueline C.K. Lam (jcklam@eee.hku.hk), Co-Director, AI-WiSe.