Bulletin No. 2, 2023

O ver the years, Professor Helen Meng Mei-ling has contributed heavily to the worlds of electrical engineering and computer science. Having received all her degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she returned to her hometown in the 1990s and began to develop her academic career at CUHK. Since then, it has continued to flourish, and she has served as Associate Dean (Research) of the University’s Faculty of Engineering as well as Chairperson of the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management. Currently, she is Patrick Huen Wing Ming Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the University. These days, Professor Meng continues to be curious about matters in the world of information technology, and is particularly interested in AI’s potential to improve communication between people, as well as between people and machines: “Communication by speech and language is quintessentially human. The speech signal carries rich information about what we mean, who we are, how we feel, as well as encoding subtle information about our education, our health and cognition.” With that in mind, she has been looking to develop AI in ways that “enable machines to communicate using speech and language” and broaden the social impact of her research. Professor Meng is a scholar well-recognised for her work in speech and language technologies, an indispensable field under the rapidly expanding arena of AI. She is well aware of how AI presents the potential to transform our society: “AI has great potential in making significant impact on society. Since the establishment of CUHK’s Faculty of Engineering in 1991 until the present day, we have always focused on this field, built up solid capabilities and nurtured wonderful talents.” Across disciplines One project that speaks to Professor Meng’s fascination with AI and communication involves designing conversational interfaces both for human- machine interactions (like chatbots) and interactions between humans moderated by a machine. This could help address challenges arising from one of Hong Kong’s biggest structural problems – our ageing population. Given that some seniors with health issues have difficulty communicating their needs, the need for aids on this front is paramount; however, the lack of suitable AI applications for Cantonese speakers proves an obstacle. Professor Meng is leading a Theme-based Research Project that aims to develop spoken language technologies that can analyse spoken languages in order to enable automated screening of neurocognitive disorders. She believes that healthcare can achieve an impressive level of semi-automation through AI. “Healthcare services present strong demands for specialised and skilled manpower support, for example in disease screening, diagnoses and monitoring,” she says. “Technology may partially automate the workflow in healthcare services and offer scalability to serve a wider population, where trained professionals can focus on the people who really need their support.” This streamlining, she suggests, can lead to “more timely and scalable health service offerings, which can also lower costs and enhance affordability.” How AI and robotics reshape the world 15 An intelligent vision for health