Bulletin No. 2, 2023

“We collaborate closely with colleagues across disciplines: medicine, nursing, linguistics, psychology and speech, to design experiments,” says Professor Meng. Exploring and harnessing the full potential of AI requires a broad church of knowledge. She sees the collegial atmosphere in CUHK to be extremely beneficial to research. “If I may be a little bit immodest,” she says with a chuckle, “you won’t find many universities elsewhere that have the expertise to look at speech technology, healthcare and neurological health simultaneously.” This close cooperation among researchers from different fields also means that AI solutions they co-develop have broader applicability to society. “Our hope is to develop AI technologies to advance technological equity,” says Professor Meng. “We stand ready to adapt our technologies to directly benefit users with our own cultural backgrounds and usages in our cultural contexts.” Beyond academia Situated in the heart of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, the Centre for Perceptual and Interactive Intelligence (CPII), where Professor Meng is director and a principal investigator, was established in 2020. The Centre is supported by the InnoHK Scheme from the Hong Kong SAR Government. Its research focus is developing and harnessing the potential of AI to improve our daily lives, with an emphasis on “the sectors of healthcare, urban services and reindustrialisation”. Its continuing research into these technologies ensures a high level of capability in fields as diverse as clothing design and industrial processes, and furthers Hong Kong’s ongoing evolution as a “smart city”. For Professor Meng, this represents a major step forward. “When one conducts research in engineering, the aim is to develop technologies that will solve problems,” she says. “Research in the university may reside mainly in academic circles. To connect our research outputs with real users, we need to bridge the gap, which requires significant efforts in applied research, development, engineering, technology transfer and entrepreneurship.” Such efforts can now be supported by public funding provided to InnoCentres, of which CPII is a prime example. “Our previous goal was to publish our work in top venues, in the hope that members from industry would adopt some of our work and develop it further. But with InnoHK funding, we are now able to push beyond academic publications and create new opportunities for our industry, our economy and for the talents we have nurtured.” 16 Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2023