Brief introduction:

Developing Hong Kong into a global fintech hub is critical to maintaining Hong Kong’s leading position in finance. What exactly is fintech? More importantly, what fintech technologies should Hong Kong develop to make itself stand out in the competition? In his talk titled “What technologies are driving fintech forward?”, Professor Yiu will provide insights to these questions and share with the audience what can be done to nurture high-end fintech professionals and attract young talent (including secondary school leavers) into this area.

About the Speaker:

SM Yiu is currently a Professor in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Hong Kong. He is also the Deputy Director of the recently established HKU-SCF FinTech Academy, the Director of the FinTech and Blockchain Laboratory, and the Associate Director of the Center for Information Security and Cryptography (CISC) of the department. He was selected three times (2016, 2017, 2019) by Clarivate Analytics as one of the highly cited researchers in Computer Science. He is also among the top 1% researchers in the University of Hong Kong for eight consecutive years (2011 – 2019). He was the conference chair/co-chairs of flag-ship international conferences and one of the three representatives from Hong Kong in the steering committee of ASIACRYPT (the flag-ship cryptographic conference in Asia). Besides fundamental research, Prof Yiu also has a start-up company in algo-trading using AI technologies and has been a consultant/advisor for companies in the area of FinTech and cyber security. He is also a devoted teacher and has been selected for the teaching award recipient once from HKU, twice from the Faculty of Engineering and seven times from the department.

Brief introduction:

Professor Shi, in his talk titled “Hong Kong as a Smart Global City”, will highlight the territory’s great potential for becoming an international leading innovation centre in urban-informatics, with a comprehensive overview of its existing research strengths related to urban geo-informatics, including GIScience, remote sensing and satellite positioning, artificial intelligence, urban planning, urban policy and geography, as well as urban and regional studies.

About the Speaker:

Professor Shi is Head of Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Urban Informatics, Chair Professor in GISci and remote sensing, Director of Research Institute in Smart Cities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He obtained his doctoral degree from University of Osnabrück in Vechta, Germany in 1994.

Professor Shi’s current research interests are in the areas of urban informatics for Smart Cities, GISci and remote sensing with focusing on analytics and quality control for spatial big data, object extraction and change detection from satellite images and LiDAR data, integrated mobile mapping technology, and 3D and dynamic GISci modelling.

Professor Shi served as President of Commission II for International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (2008-2012), President for Hong Kong Geographic Information System Association (2001-2003). He also serves as an editorial board member for a number of international journals. He has published more than 400 scientific articles (with over 200 SCI papers) and 15 books. He received a number of prestige awards, including an award from International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and Natural Science Award from the State Council, China.