Bulletin Spring‧Summer 2001

supported by other sources of funding are also grouped under the big umbrell a of the AoE. The number o f CUHK participants involved in the first year comes to around 50. Prof. Liew said that all projects under the AoE are ongoing. Those directly related to the scheme w i l l be funded for three years, at the end of which they should be considered completed. The purpose of the AoE is to consolidate existin g research rather than launch new projects. The focus is on ‘proving the concepts in papers' and not 'publishing papers'. And researchers are more concerned w i t h implementation, development, and fostering collaboration wit h industry. The scheme is expected to support about 20 projects in its entire duration. Multimedia Technologies Track One ongoing project in this category is the building o f the next-generation video-on- demand system, an essential part of which is a parallel video server architecture which is more cost-effective and reliable in the provision of VoD services. Instead o f using one server to transport video, the parallel system allows one server to carry on the job i f ano t her server break s d own . A o E sponsorship w i l l enable the system to be implemented as a prototype. Researchers w i ll also develop i n t e l l i g e n t mu l t i c a s t and caching technologies to increase the capacity o f VoD systems, and explore the use of adaptive video streaming and variable-bit- rate streaming to ensure video quality when there is traffic congestion on the network. Internet Applications Track Researchers in this track set out to develop a Chinese WA P search engine based on the Chinese search engine M o L i & ANSeRS. Features w i l l include real-time H T ML to WM L conversion, Chinese search engine service, news and Financial information , e-mail, and one-click auction. From there they w i l l go on to develop b i l i ngua l search engines. Other p r o j e c ts i n t h i s s t r e am i n c l u d e the development of a Chinese broadcast news retrieval engine which w i l l deliver Chinese news transcript indexing and Chinese news video processing; Internet-based supply chain management systems wh i c h w i l l p r o d u c e p u b l i c a t i o ns an d p r o v i d e consultancy and other services to local industries; and data mining for Chinese Web- based Informatio n Extraction which w i l l include a robo t for Chinese web-base d information extraction, and a segment tool for Chinese data. Networking Research Track Projects grouped under this track include (1) the development of quality of service guarantees in cross-path switches, wh i ch aims at m i n i m i z i ng end-to-end delay and packet loss rate in delivery over future high- speed networks; (2) the provision of quality of service routing i n Storage Area Networks, which aims at implementing path switching in Fibre Channel Switches to provide quality o f service guarantees i n Storage Are a Networks; (3) IP-voice Multiplexin g w i th Q u a l i t y o f S e r v i c e and B a n d w i d t h E f f i c i e n c y , w h i c h aims at i mp r o v i ng bandwidth and delay; and (4) researc h and development o f efficient algorithms and fast hardware implementation o f cryptographic primitives for network security applications. Bridging Imagination and Reality The I T r e v o l u t i o n has g i v en new dimensions to the way we live and work. When the array of projects under this AoE scheme come to fruition five years from now, everyday life w i ll have moved one step closer towards the world of science fiction; through information technology, some of the wildest of human imaginations w i l l have become reality. Chinese Universit y Bulletin Spring • Summer 2 0 00 19