Bulletin No. 2, 2009

42   Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2009 Honours and Recognition International Accolade for Engineering Professor P rof. Huang Jianwei ( centre ) of the Depar tment of Information Engineering received the IEEE ComSoc A s i a - P a c i f i c Ou t s t a nd i ng Yo ung Res earcher Award 2009 from the p re s t i g i ous I EEE Communi c at i ons Society, for his strong publication record and active participation in conference activities over the last three years. The award was established in 2001 with the aim of honouring capable researchers aged 35 or below. This year, six out of 34 applicants from the Asia-Pacific region were awarded. Professor Huang is the only winner from Hong Kong of the 19 who have received the award so far. New Haze Removal Technology Wins Best Paper Award P rof. Tang Xiaoou (left) and his PhD student Mr. He Kaiming (right), of the Department of Information Engineering, and Dr. Sun Jian of Microsoft Research Asia, beat some 1,400 papers submitted by scholars all over the world to win the only Best Paper Award for ‘Single Image Haze Removal Using Dark Channel Prior’ at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2009. It is the first time ever for Asians to receive this top honour since the establishment of the conference 25 years ago. Haze removal technology has important and extensive applications in photo processing, outdoor CCTV systems and analysis of satellite images. The technology can also be applied to estimate the corresponding distances between different objects in a photo, enabling 2D pictures to be converted to 3D models. It is considered another significant breakthrough in the field.