Research Centre | R&D Annual Report 2015

Centre for Information Systems and Software Technologies

REPORT OF ACTIVITIES

Introductory GPGPU hands-on Workshop
Date: 7 – 8 February, 2015 Time: 9:30 am to 5:30 pm Event Type: Training/Workshop Venue: SB211, LKS FES, UTAR (KL Campus) Speaker: Mr. Lee Wai Kong (FICT lecturer), Dr. Chong Poh Kit (FES Lecturer) This workshop was a joint collaboration between CISST and Centre for mathematical Sciences (CMS). The training was provided by Mr. Lee Wai Kong and Mr. Chong Poh Kit, both experts in GPU deployment for different types of applications. This entry-level workshop was aimed to supply participants with basic to intermediate-level GPGPU programming knowledge so that they can use NVIDIA GPU as a general accelerator to various applications. A total of 11 participants from the public participated in the event.

Introductory GPGPU hands-on Workshop

Date: 7 – 8 February, 2015
Time: 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Event Type: Training/Workshop
Venue: SB211, LKS FES, UTAR (KL Campus)
Speaker: Mr. Lee Wai Kong (FICT lecturer),
Dr. Chong Poh Kit (FES Lecturer)

This workshop was a joint collaboration between CISST and Centre for mathematical Sciences (CMS). The training was provided by Mr. Lee Wai Kong and Mr. Chong Poh Kit, both experts in GPU deployment for different types of applications. This entry-level workshop was aimed to supply participants with basic to intermediate-level GPGPU programming knowledge so that they can use NVIDIA GPU as a general accelerator to various applications.

A total of 11 participants from the public participated in the event.

Agriculture Monitoring System using ICT
Date: 6 February, 2015 Time: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm Event Type: Talk by CISST Venue: N108 (Huawei Lab), Block N, FICT, UTAR (Perak Campus) Speaker: Dr. Goh Hock Guan #Participants: 16 The talk was given by Dr. Goh Hock Guan who is currently one of the leader for the the "Internet of Things" research group of CISST. During the talk, Dr. Goh shared his research experience of deploying wireless sensor network for agriculture monitoring. In the first part, Dr. Goh introduced the Cattle Monitoring System, a project which he conducted in Scotland together with UK researchers. In the second part, Dr. Goh shared his current research work in Paddy Field Monitoring System. The research work was supported by internal and external grants. Dr. Goh also discussed about issues related to system development and deployment, data abstraction and reformation, load balancing algorithms for multi-sinks, and energy efficient data collection in his talk.

Agriculture Monitoring System using ICT

Date: 6 February, 2015
Time: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Event Type: Talk by CISST
Venue: N108 (Huawei Lab), Block N, FICT, UTAR (Perak Campus)
Speaker: Dr. Goh Hock Guan
#Participants: 16

The talk was given by Dr. Goh Hock Guan who is currently one of the leader for the the "Internet of Things" research group of CISST. During the talk, Dr. Goh shared his research experience of deploying wireless sensor network for agriculture monitoring. In the first part, Dr. Goh introduced the Cattle Monitoring System, a project which he conducted in Scotland together with UK researchers. In the second part, Dr. Goh shared his current research work in Paddy Field Monitoring System. The research work was supported by internal and external grants. Dr. Goh also discussed about issues related to system development and deployment, data abstraction and reformation, load balancing algorithms for multi-sinks, and energy efficient data collection in his talk.

Research Design and Methodology for Information Systems Studies: Dos and Don’ts
Date: 2 March, 2015 Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm (Talk) 12:00 pm – 01:00 pm )Q&A Session) Event Type: Talk by CISST Venue: N109 (FYP Lab), Block N, FICT, UTAR (Perak Campus) Speaker: Dr. William Yeoh from Deakin University (Australia) #Participants: 10 This talk was given by Dr. William Yeoh during his visitation to the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (FICT). Dr. William Yeoh was from Deakin University, Australia and he had published one scholarly book and over 50 publications. His research works have appeared in high-tier IS journals (including A & A* ranked journals) and conferences (including ICIS, AMCIS and PACIS). The aim of the talk was to share some insights into research design and methodology for Information Systems (IS) studies so that academicians can choose suitable research methodologies for their research. Dr. Willian discussed about various research approaches, paradigms, methodologies and methods used in IS research. At the end of the talk, there was also a question and answer session.

Research Design and Methodology for Information Systems Studies: Dos and Don’ts

Date: 2 March, 2015
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm (Talk)
12:00 pm – 01:00 pm )Q&A Session)
Event Type: Talk by CISST
Venue: N109 (FYP Lab), Block N, FICT, UTAR (Perak Campus)
Speaker: Dr. William Yeoh from Deakin University (Australia)
#Participants: 10

This talk was given by Dr. William Yeoh during his visitation to the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (FICT). Dr. William Yeoh was from Deakin University, Australia and he had published one scholarly book and over 50 publications. His research works have appeared in high-tier IS journals (including A & A* ranked journals) and conferences (including ICIS, AMCIS and PACIS).

The aim of the talk was to share some insights into research design and methodology for Information Systems (IS) studies so that academicians can choose suitable research methodologies for their research. Dr. Willian discussed about various research approaches, paradigms, methodologies and methods used in IS research. At the end of the talk, there was also a question and answer session.

Hands-on R and RHadoop Workshop
Date: 23 April, 2015 Time: 10:30 am - 05:00 pm Event Type: Workshop conducted by CISST and CCIS Venue: UTAR (Setapak Campus) Speaker: Dr. Ng Yen Kaow #Participants: 14 The workshop was fully sponsored by Hilti Asia IT Services Sdn. Bhd. Out of all big data tools, the statistical software most commonly used for big data analytics is R. Thanks to the abundance of statistical and machine learning libraries in R, the software is now the de-facto standard (along with Python) for large-scale analytics. In fact, R is now installed by default in Amazon's Big Data platform (Elastic MapReduce), along with the standard Hadoop software (Hue, Hive, HBase etc). The common way to run R codes on Hadoop is through R scripts. However, there is an alternative: RHadoop. RHadoop allows one to use Hadoop directly from within R's graphical user interface, and similarly, to retrieve the final results from Hadoop directly into R. Moreover, the R user can completely avoid all the hassles in setting up R and Hadoop, by running RStudio as a web application on a typical web browser (e.g. Chrome), where the application is served from a remote Hadoop cluster. This workshop was organized in conjunction with the Big Data Week event that was held from 20 to26 April 2015. This training was targeted to anyone who needed to run a server for Big Data analytics, or simply wanted to try out R and Hadoop. During this workshop, participants were guided to install a "personal" version of Hadoop (Hortonworks Data Platform) on a normal PC, and serves RStudio from the PC. A real-world problem, solved with MapReduce, was used to illustrate how the entire setup works. After installation, they were also shown how they can use these software to solve real-world problems. The instructor for the workshop was Dr. Ng Yen Kaow (lecturer, FICT) in Setapak Campus. Dr. Ng Yen Kaow is currently an Assistant Professor in UTAR and his research interest is in bioinformatics, algorithms and analysis and machine learning.

Hands-on R and RHadoop Workshop

Date: 23 April, 2015
Time: 10:30 am - 05:00 pm
Event Type: Workshop conducted by CISST and CCIS
Venue: UTAR (Setapak Campus)
Speaker: Dr. Ng Yen Kaow
#Participants: 14

The workshop was fully sponsored by Hilti Asia IT Services Sdn. Bhd. Out of all big data tools, the statistical software most commonly used for big data analytics is R. Thanks to the abundance of statistical and machine learning libraries in R, the software is now the de-facto standard (along with Python) for large-scale analytics. In fact, R is now installed by default in Amazon's Big Data platform (Elastic MapReduce), along with the standard Hadoop software (Hue, Hive, HBase etc).

The common way to run R codes on Hadoop is through R scripts. However, there is an alternative: RHadoop. RHadoop allows one to use Hadoop directly from within R's graphical user interface, and similarly, to retrieve the final results from Hadoop directly into R. Moreover, the R user can completely avoid all the hassles in setting up R and Hadoop, by running RStudio as a web application on a typical web browser (e.g. Chrome), where the application is served from a remote Hadoop cluster.

This workshop was organized in conjunction with the Big Data Week event that was held from 20 to26 April 2015. This training was targeted to anyone who needed to run a server for Big Data analytics, or simply wanted to try out R and Hadoop.

During this workshop, participants were guided to install a "personal" version of Hadoop (Hortonworks Data Platform) on a normal PC, and serves RStudio from the PC. A real-world problem, solved with MapReduce, was used to illustrate how the entire setup works. After installation, they were also shown how they can use these software to solve real-world problems.

The instructor for the workshop was Dr. Ng Yen Kaow (lecturer, FICT) in Setapak Campus. Dr. Ng Yen Kaow is currently an Assistant Professor in UTAR and his research interest is in bioinformatics, algorithms and analysis and machine learning.

The FICT Postgraduate Colloquiums (June 2015)
Date: 4 June, 2015 Time: 9:20 am - 12:45 pm Event Type: The FICT Postgraduate Colloquium Venue: N109, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus) CISST and FICT has successfully organized the FICT Colloquium (June 2015) on 4th June 2015. In this colloquium, all postgraduate students (both Master and PhD students) in FICT will present their recent work or findings in their field of research. The Colloquium served as a platform for postgraduate students of FICT to exchange ideas and gather feedback on their research progress and findings. Through this interaction, students will gain exposure on different fields of research undertaken by students in the faculty. It also served as a platform for the supervisors and evaluators to gauge the performance of postgraduate students before the research progress report. The June FICT Colloquium had a total of 9 postgraduate presentations, grouped into 3 sessions, namely System and Artificial Intelligence, Network Sensors and Routing, and Image Processing and Computer Vision. Each student delivered a 15 minutes presentation, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A. Through the oral presentation and interaction with other participants, we hope that they will be able to gain more exposure and receive good feedback on their work.

The FICT Postgraduate Colloquiums (June 2015)

Date: 4 June, 2015
Time: 9:20 am - 12:45 pm
Event Type: The FICT Postgraduate Colloquium
Venue: N109, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus)

CISST and FICT has successfully organized the FICT Colloquium (June 2015) on 4th June 2015. In this colloquium, all postgraduate students (both Master and PhD students) in FICT will present their recent work or findings in their field of research. The Colloquium served as a platform for postgraduate students of FICT to exchange ideas and gather feedback on their research progress and findings. Through this interaction, students will gain exposure on different fields of research undertaken by students in the faculty. It also served as a platform for the supervisors and evaluators to gauge the performance of postgraduate students before the research progress report.

The June FICT Colloquium had a total of 9 postgraduate presentations, grouped into 3 sessions, namely System and Artificial Intelligence, Network Sensors and Routing, and Image Processing and Computer Vision. Each student delivered a 15 minutes presentation, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A. Through the oral presentation and interaction with other participants, we hope that they will be able to gain more exposure and receive good feedback on their work.

A Stochastic Optimization Approach to 3D Dense Reconstruction
Date: 26 June, 2015 Time: 2:30 pm - 04:00 pm Event Type: Talk Venue: N008, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus) Speaker: Prof. Dr. Zhen Chen #Participants: 16 In this talk, the speaker Prof. Zhen Chen, discussed about his experience in applying computer vision methodology in 3D dense reconstruction. Prof Zen Chen is currently a professor in FICT, UTAR. He is a Fellow for International for Pattern Recognition and a Senior Member of IEEE. His research interests include pattern recognition, image modeling and rendering, computer vision, virtual reality and machine learning. In the talk, Prof Zen discussed about two major issues of 3D reconstruction, namely 3D geometry accuracy and 3D geometry completeness. First, he presented on how to employ an adaptive weighting function for stereo matching to tackle the accuracy issue. In addition, a strategy that allows the child patch to borrow the parent view was adopted to deal with the case with a small number of views available for the completeness issue. Second, he presented his work on using a GLN-PSO stochastic patch optimization method to avoid the local traps of a derivative based optimization method. In his work, he also used a patch priority queue to select the best patch for the patch expansion process thus improving the reconstruction efficiency and quality. Lastly, Prof Zen presented his experimental results on synthetic and real image data sets including the Middlebury benchmark low-resolution data sets and a sparse high-resolution face image data set. The proposed method was found comparable to the top ranked reconstruction methods reported in the Middlebury MVS website and other existing methods.

A Stochastic Optimization Approach to 3D Dense Reconstruction

Date: 26 June, 2015
Time: 2:30 pm - 04:00 pm
Event Type: Talk
Venue: N008, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus)
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Zhen Chen
#Participants: 16

In this talk, the speaker Prof. Zhen Chen, discussed about his experience in applying computer vision methodology in 3D dense reconstruction. Prof Zen Chen is currently a professor in FICT, UTAR. He is a Fellow for International for Pattern Recognition and a Senior Member of IEEE. His research interests include pattern recognition, image modeling and rendering, computer vision, virtual reality and machine learning.

In the talk, Prof Zen discussed about two major issues of 3D reconstruction, namely 3D geometry accuracy and 3D geometry completeness. First, he presented on how to employ an adaptive weighting function for stereo matching to tackle the accuracy issue. In addition, a strategy that allows the child patch to borrow the parent view was adopted to deal with the case with a small number of views available for the completeness issue. Second, he presented his work on using a GLN-PSO stochastic patch optimization method to avoid the local traps of a derivative based optimization method. In his work, he also used a patch priority queue to select the best patch for the patch expansion process thus improving the reconstruction efficiency and quality. Lastly, Prof Zen presented his experimental results on synthetic and real image data sets including the Middlebury benchmark low-resolution data sets and a sparse high-resolution face image data set. The proposed method was found comparable to the top ranked reconstruction methods reported in the Middlebury MVS website and other existing methods.

How to use Big Data for Humanity Research?
Date: 16 July, 2015 Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm Event Type: Talk conducted by CISST Venue: N109, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus) Speaker: Professor Huang Yi-long #participants: More than 40 This was one of the most popular talks organized by CISST, drawing crowds not only from the ICT field, but also those from Chinese Studies. In this talk, Professor Huang Yi-Long shared about his experience in using ICT to make breakthrough in his research into ancient Chinese literature. Prof Huang showed how modern ICT search engines trigger a breakthrough in understanding and interpreting ancient Chinese classics, especially when dealing with difficult and obscure Chinese terms. Prof Huang's started to research into history and ancient Chinese literature after he joined the Institute of History at Tsinghua University in Hsinchu since 1987. His research interest include the history of science, history of eastern and western cultural exchanges, the history of Ming and Qing dynasties, history of occult, military history, and marine exploration history. He is also the chair professor of Leiden University, Beijing Tsinghua University, and Taipei National University of the Arts, the honorary professor of the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the honorary fellow of Beijing Chinese Academy of Sciences. His latest book, “Duet: Dialog He was elected to the Academia Sinica as an academician in 2006. Between Redology and Qing History”, is an interdisciplinary work which he uses big data to “travel through” three, four hundred years of the Qing dynasty.

How to use Big Data for Humanity Research?

Date: 16 July, 2015
Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Event Type: Talk conducted by CISST
Venue: N109, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus)
Speaker: Professor Huang Yi-long
#participants: More than 40

This was one of the most popular talks organized by CISST, drawing crowds not only from the ICT field, but also those from Chinese Studies. In this talk, Professor Huang Yi-Long shared about his experience in using ICT to make breakthrough in his research into ancient Chinese literature. Prof Huang showed how modern ICT search engines trigger a breakthrough in understanding and interpreting ancient Chinese classics, especially when dealing with difficult and obscure Chinese terms.

Prof Huang's started to research into history and ancient Chinese literature after he joined the Institute of History at Tsinghua University in Hsinchu since 1987. His research interest include the history of science, history of eastern and western cultural exchanges, the history of Ming and Qing dynasties, history of occult, military history, and marine exploration history. He is also the chair professor of Leiden University, Beijing Tsinghua University, and Taipei National University of the Arts, the honorary professor of the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the honorary fellow of Beijing Chinese Academy of Sciences. His latest book, “Duet: Dialog He was elected to the Academia Sinica as an academician in 2006. Between Redology and Qing History”, is an interdisciplinary work which he uses big data to “travel through” three, four hundred years of the Qing dynasty.

From Open Educational Resources (OER) to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)
Date: 20 October, 2015 Time: 10:00 am - 11:30 am Type: Academic Talk Venue: N108, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus) Speaker: Mr Chong Chee Keong #Participants: 18 In this talk, CISST invited Mr. Chong Chee Keong from the Faculty of Business and Finance (FBF), UTAR to share his ideas on the development and future of OER and MOOC in Malaysia. Mr. Chong was a member of CLT, UTAR and is active in ICT-In-Education activities through the collaboration with UNESCO Bangkok, ICT-In-Education unit. He is also a Microsoft Faculty Fellow since 2014. In the talk, Mr. Chong discussed several popular open educational resources (OER) in the market. The OER movement started in the year 2002 and within a decade it has evolved into another form namely MOOC which started to become popular after year 2012. Mr. Chong also expressed his optimism in the future and potential of MOOC and called for better ways to benefit from the platform.

From Open Educational Resources (OER) to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

Date: 20 October, 2015
Time: 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Type: Academic Talk
Venue: N108, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus)
Speaker: Mr Chong Chee Keong
#Participants: 18

In this talk, CISST invited Mr. Chong Chee Keong from the Faculty of Business and Finance (FBF), UTAR to share his ideas on the development and future of OER and MOOC in Malaysia. Mr. Chong was a member of CLT, UTAR and is active in ICT-In-Education activities through the collaboration with UNESCO Bangkok, ICT-In-Education unit. He is also a Microsoft Faculty Fellow since 2014.

In the talk, Mr. Chong discussed several popular open educational resources (OER) in the market. The OER movement started in the year 2002 and within a decade it has evolved into another form namely MOOC which started to become popular after year 2012. Mr. Chong also expressed his optimism in the future and potential of MOOC and called for better ways to benefit from the platform.

International Strategies of Cyber Security
Date: 5 November, 2015 Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm (Talk) Event Type: Technical Talk Venue: N008, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus) Speaker: Professor Matthew Warren from Deakin University (Australia) #Participants: 26 Professor Matthew shared about sophisticated national security policies to protect against current and future cyber security threats to Australia. He presented about the current trends and issues in relation to cyber security. Discussion included some of the common security risks that Australia faces, comparing with examples from around the world. Professor Matthew also shared the steps that countries around the world have undertaken in relation to developing national policies to deal with critical infrastructure protection. Professor Matthew Warren is currently a Professor (Chair) of Information Systems at Deakin University, Australia. He has previously held the role of Head of School of the School of Information Systems. Professor Matthew is an international renowned researcher in the areas of Information Security, Computer Ethics and Cyber Security. He has authored and co-authored over 300 books, book chapters, journal papers and conference papers. He has received numerous grants and awards from national and international funding bodies

International Strategies of Cyber Security

Date: 5 November, 2015
Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm (Talk)
Event Type: Technical Talk
Venue: N008, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus)
Speaker: Professor Matthew Warren from Deakin University (Australia)
#Participants: 26

Professor Matthew shared about sophisticated national security policies to protect against current and future cyber security threats to Australia. He presented about the current trends and issues in relation to cyber security.

Discussion included some of the common security risks that Australia faces, comparing with examples from around the world. Professor Matthew also shared the steps that countries around the world have undertaken in relation to developing national policies to deal with critical infrastructure protection.

Professor Matthew Warren is currently a Professor (Chair) of Information Systems at Deakin University, Australia. He has previously held the role of Head of School of the School of Information Systems. Professor Matthew is an international renowned researcher in the areas of Information Security, Computer Ethics and Cyber Security. He has authored and co-authored over 300 books, book chapters, journal papers and conference papers. He has received numerous grants and awards from national and international funding bodies

The FICT Postgraaduate Colloquium (December 2015)
Date: 18 December, 2015 Time: 09:00 am - 10:30 am Type: The FICT Postgraduate Colloquium Venue: N108 & N109, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus) CISST and FICT organized the second FICT Colloquium of the year on 18th June 2015. In this colloquium, all postgraduate students (both Master and PhD students) in FICT presented their recent work or findings in their field of research. The Colloquium served as the platform for postgraduate students of FICT to exchange ideas and gather feedback on their research progress and findings. Through this interaction, students have gained exposure on different fields of research undertaken by students in the faculty. It also served as a platform for the supervisors and evaluators to gauge the performance of postgraduate students before the research progress report. The December FICT Colloquium has two parallel tracks due to the number of presenters. There were a total of 12 postgraduate presentations, grouped into 4 sessions, namely Information Systems and Software Technology, Graphic Processing & Computer Vision, Network Routing and Hardware Integration and Algorithm and Artificial Intelligence. Each student delivered a 20 minutes presentation, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A.

The FICT Postgraaduate Colloquium (December 2015)

Date: 18 December, 2015
Time: 09:00 am - 10:30 am
Type: The FICT Postgraduate Colloquium
Venue: N108 & N109, Block N, UTAR (Kampar Campus)

CISST and FICT organized the second FICT Colloquium of the year on 18th June 2015. In this colloquium, all postgraduate students (both Master and PhD students) in FICT presented their recent work or findings in their field of research. The Colloquium served as the platform for postgraduate students of FICT to exchange ideas and gather feedback on their research progress and findings. Through this interaction, students have gained exposure on different fields of research undertaken by students in the faculty. It also served as a platform for the supervisors and evaluators to gauge the performance of postgraduate students before the research progress report.
The December FICT Colloquium has two parallel tracks due to the number of presenters. There were a total of 12 postgraduate presentations, grouped into 4 sessions, namely Information Systems and Software Technology, Graphic Processing & Computer Vision, Network Routing and Hardware Integration and Algorithm and Artificial Intelligence. Each student delivered a 20 minutes presentation, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A.

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R & D ANNUAL REPORT 2015

Centre for Information Systems and Software Technologies