(Fellow, IEEE)

Prof. KWONG Tak Wu Sam, City University of Hong Kong, China

Talk Title: Deep Learning Based Video Coding and its Applications (Abstract)

Biography: Sam Kwong received his B.Sc. degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo, M.A.Sc. in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada, and Ph.D. from Fernuniversität Hagen, Germany. Before joining the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), he was a Diagnostic Engineer with Control Data Canada. He was responsible for designing diagnostic software to detect the manufacturing faults of the VLSI chips in the Cyber 430 machine. He later joined Bell-Northern Research as a Member of the Scientific Staff working on the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) project.

Kwong is currently Chair Professor at the CityU Department of Computer Science, where he previously served as Department Head and Professor from 2012 to 2018. Prof Kwong joined CityU as a Department of Electronic Engineering lecturer in 1989. Prof. Kwong is the associate editor of leading IEEE transaction journals, including IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, and IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics.

Kwong is actively engaged in knowledge exchange between academia and industry. In 1996, he was responsible for designing the first handheld GSM mobile phone consultancy project at the City University of Hong Kong, one of the largest. He has filed over 20 US patents, of which 17 have been granted.

Kwong has a prolific research record. He has co-authored three research books, eight book chapters, and over 300 technical papers. According to Google Scholar, his works have been cited more than 27,000 times with an h-index of 73. He has been the distinguished lecturer of IEEE SMCS since 2018 and delivers two DL lectures yearly to promote IEEE SMC Society and cutting-edge cybernetics technology. He also frequently delivers keynote speeches in IEEE supported conferences. In 2014, he was elevated to IEEE Fellow for his contributions to optimization techniques in cybernetics and video coding.

Kwong’s involvement in the multiple facets of IEEE has been extensive and committed throughout the years. For IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (SMCS), he serves as Hong Kong SMCS Chapter Chairman, Board Member, Conference Coordinator, Membership Coordinator and Member of the Long Range Planning and Finance Committee, Vice President of Conferences and Meetings, Vice President of Cybernetics. He led the IEEE SMC Hong Kong Chapter to win the Best Chapter Award in 2011 and was awarded the Outstanding Contribution Award for his contributions to SMC 2015. He was the President-Elect of the IEEE SMC Society in 2021. Currently, he serves as the President of the IEEE SMC Society. He is an IEEE fellow and listed as a Highly cited researcher according to Clarivate 2022 highly cited researcher report.

(Fellow, IEEE)

Prof. Weisi Lin, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Talk Title: Computational Models toward Aesthetic Quality Assessment of Images (Abstract)

Biography: Weisi Lin is an active researcher in image processing, perception-based signal modelling and assessment, video compression, and multimedia communication. He had been the Lab Head, Visual Processing, Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore. He is currently a Professor in School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, where he also serves as the Associate Chair (Research). He is a Fellow of IEEE and IET. He has been awarded Highly Cited Researcher 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 by Clarivate Analytics, and elected for the Research Award 2023, College of Engineering, NTU. He has been a Distinguished Lecturer in both IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (2016-17) and Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (2012-13). He has been an Associate Editor for IEEE Trans. Neural Networks Learn. Syst., IEEE Trans. Image Process., IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., IEEE Trans. Multim., IEEE Sig. Process. Lett., Quality and User Experience, and J. Visual Commun. Image Represent. He has been a TP Chair for several international conferences and is a General Co-Chair for IEEE ICME 2025. He believes that good theory is practical and has delivered 10+ major systems for industrial deployment with the technology developed.

Prof. Michele NAPPI, University of Salerno, Italy

Biography: Michele Nappi received the laurea degree (cum laude) in Computer Science from the University of Salerno, Italy, in 1991, the M.SC. degree in Information and Communication Technology from I.I.A.S.S. "E.R. Caianiello," in 1997, and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Padova, Italy, in 1997. He is currently a full professor of Computer Science at the University of Salerno. Author of more than 200 papers in peer review international journals, international conferences and book chapters, He is co-editor of several international books. His research interests include pattern recognition, image processing, image compression and indexing, multimedia databases and biometrics, human computer interaction, vr\ar. Dr. Nappi serves as associate editor and managing guest editor for several international journals. He is also a member of tpc of international conferences. He is team leader of the Biometric and Image Processing Lab (BIPLAB) and received several international awards for scientific and research activities. IEEE Senior Member, GIRPR/IAPR Member, He has been the President of the Italian Chapter of the IEEE Biometrics Council. In 2014 He was one of the founders of the spin off BS3 (biometric system for security and safety). He is Deputy Rector for the University of Salerno Reputation and International Ranking and co-EiC of (Elsevier) Image and Vision Computing Journal.

Prof. Yen-Wei Chen, Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Talk Title: Recent Advances in Medical Image Analysis Using Deep Learning (Abstract)

Biography: gree in 1987, and the D.E. degree in 1990, both from Osaka Univ., Osaka, Japan. He was a research fellow with the Institute for Laser Technology, Osaka, from 1991 to 1994. From Oct. 1994 to Mar. 2004, he was an associate Professor and a professor with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Univ. of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan. He is currently a professor with the college of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Japan. He is the founder and the first director of Center of Advanced ICT for Medicine and Healthcare, Ritsumeikan University, Japan.

His research interests include medical image analysis, computer vision and computational intelligence. He has published more than 300 research papers in a number of leading journals and leading conferences including CVPR, ICCV, MICCAI, IEEE Trans. Image Processing, IEEE Trans. Medical Imaging. He has received many distinguished awards including ICPR2012 Best Scientific Paper Award, 2014 JAMIT Best Paper Award. He is/was a leader of numerous national and industrial research projects.