Computer Science Artificial intelligence

The University of Osaka, D3 Center, SANKEN, and NEC Corporation, have jointly developed RED-ONION (Research EnhanceD Osaka university Next-generation Infrastructure for Open research and innovatioN), a next-generation data transfer infrastructure designed to securely and rapidly transfer large volumes of research data—including sensitive data related to genomics and healthcare, as well as the results of its analysis and processing—in both directions between the D3 Center and SANKEN on the university’s Suita Campus. The infrastructure is scheduled to begin pilot operation in October 2026.

Researchers at the University of Osaka have developed a method for distinguishing the L- and D-forms of amino acids based on current waveforms generated by single molecules passing through a nanogap. The L/D ratio of amino acids is a potential biosignature of life. Major features of the amino acid composition were captured for astrobiologically relevant samples. The method could be used to develop electrical instruments for extraterrestrial life detection.

A new computational method aligns spatial transcriptomics data while retaining cell-level measurements.

Lingnan University held a flag-raising ceremony to celebrate the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on the University campus today, 1 October, starting at 10:30 am. Honoured guests included the Hon Andrew Yao Cho-fai, Council Chairman of Lingnan University; Dr Patrick Wong Chi-kwong, Chairman of the Court; Ms Carrie Leung Ka-lai, Treasurer of the Council; Mr Sammy Leung Chung-sing, Council Member; Prof William Shum Wai-lam, Council Member; Mr David Kwok Sek-chi, Member of the Court; Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science; Prof Raymond Chan Hon-fu, Vice-President (Academics) cum Provost and Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Scientific Computing; Prof Xin Yao, Vice-President (Research and Innovation) and Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor of Machine Learning; and Mr Ernest Chan Chi-man, Vice-President (Administration), and Lingnan senior management, staff, and students.

Researchers from the University of Osaka and collaborating institutions accelerated protons to nearly half the speed of light using a long-pulse laser and ultrathin graphene. A moving electric field carried the protons to high energies, and artificial intelligence helped detect rare high-energy particles among millions of detector images. This technique could pave the way for future AI-driven autonomous laser experiment systems.

A new framework developed by SUTD researchers could improve how robots, autonomous systems and augmented reality tools recognise objects and navigate complex real-world environments.

Correlation does not imply causation. Using AI to discover new materials is becoming more common, but data-driven approaches sometimes rely heavily on correlations and make testing AI-based predictions difficult. A new perspective paper published by Tohoku University researchers developed a framework for incorporating physics-based principles into AI to generate more interpretable, testable, and meaningful predictions.

The University Grants Committee (UGC) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region presented the 2026 UGC Teaching Award to Prof Helen Geng Hongyan, Assistant Professor of Teaching of the Division of Science at Lingnan University. She received the award in the General Faculty Members category. The award recognises her student-centred, innovative teaching approach, which breaks through traditional boundaries between the arts and sciences, incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) and Service-Learning in science education, stimulates students’ interest in interdisciplinary learning, and demonstrates excellence in teaching.

Lingnan University and the Civil Service Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government jointly organised the first Government Career Fair on the Lingnan campus today (29 September), with 20 exhibition booths, bringing together over 15 government bureaux and departments — including the Digital Policy Office, the Education Bureau, disciplined services and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, totalling over 30 civil service grades. Recruitment activities were held alongside career talks, on-site interviews, and written examinations, helping students gain a deeper understanding of the career development opportunities available across different government grades.

AI-assisted TB screening could reduce costs and bring diagnostic support to underserved communities, helping narrow gaps in public healthcare.

The Lingnan University Institute for Advanced Study (LUIAS) held a ceremony on campus yesterday, 23 September, to confer the title of Senior Lingnan Scholar on Prof Meng Bingchun, a renowned scholar in media and communications, and Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), in recognition of her important academic contributions in the fields of media studies, communication governance, and digital culture. Her distinguished lecture, titled “The politics and poetics of AI: From great power competition to imaginaries of good life”, offered an in-depth analysis of the divergent artificial intelligence (AI) policies and development models of China and the US, explaining that this competition is not only a rivalry over “hard power” in data and computing capabilities, but also a contest between the two sides’ visions of good life.

Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science at Lingnan University, welcomes the release of Hong Kong’s First Five-Year Plan and the 2026 Policy Address delivered by Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR Government, Mr John Lee, and responds as follows:

Lingnan University has achieved outstanding results in the newly released 2026 ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS), with eight subjects on the list, nearly three times as many as last year. Five subjects, including Computer Science and Engineering, and Electrical and Electronic Engineering, made the list for the first time, and Artificial Intelligence, which made its debut on the list last year, saw a significant leap in its ranking, breaking into the global top 100 for the first time in the 76th to 100th band. This achievement underscores Lingnan’s dedication to advancing interdisciplinary research in artificial intelligence and data science, and demonstrates widespread recognition from the international academic community.

AI-powered cyborg cockroaches, Undiagnosed kidney disease, Plants as genetic engineers, AI and mental workload, Carnivorous plants confirm Darwin prediction, Moisture conveyor belt and Forever chemicals in furry friends. Read all in the latest Editor's Choice.

Lingnan University recently hosted the Research and Knowledge Transfer Excellence Awards Presentation Ceremony 2026. At the “Excellence Beyond Achievement Where Technology Meets Humanity” ceremony, 53 Lingnan scholars were presented with the Outstanding Researcher Award, the Early Career Researcher Award, and the Research & Knowledge Transfer Fund Award for their exceptional contributions to academic research and knowledge transfer that advance societal development. The University’s overall innovation and technology performance reached new heights in the 2025/26 academic year, with the number of granted patents for research projects increasing sixfold year-on-year to set a new record.

Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu, Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research), Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, and J.K. Lee Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence at Lingnan University, was recently elected to the Class of 2026 Fellows of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) in recognition of his outstanding academic achievements and remarkable contributions in the field of science. Fellowship of the RSC is one of the highest honours Canada bestows upon scholars and scientists. This year, 105 people worldwide were elected as new Fellows, and Prof Kwong is one of the three scholars in Hong Kong SAR to receive this prestigious recognition. He will attend the induction ceremony in Ottawa in November.

Finding better materials to store hydrogen safely and efficiently is key to clean energy, but AI models trained on incomplete data can recommend candidates that don't actually work in practice. An international team led by Tohoku University, drawing on insight from 69 researchers, has proposed a "physics-aware" framework that combines thermodynamic constraints, reproducible data, and real experimental feedback to make AI-guided materials discovery more reliable. The roadmap could help accelerate the search for practical hydrogen storage solutions to support future clean-energy systems.

Researchers at Tohoku University have combined multiple tools to create an automated, self-improving AI workflow that may improve our search for polymer material candidates so that it is less expensive, less costly, and more environmentally friendly.

Prof Jean-Michel Morel, Chair Professor of the Division of Industrial Data Science at Lingnan University, has been elected a Foreign Member of the Luxembourg Academy of Sciences and Arts (LASA). The honour recognises his pioneering research extending from mathematical foundations to image analysis and industrial data science, and demonstrating the profound contribution of fundamental mathematics to artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and image analysis, aligning with LASA's mission to foster interdisciplinary exchange.

Validating artificial intelligence performance in radiology studies with demographic subgroups

Lingnan University hosted the “Empower Your Future: Lingnan Postgraduate Orientation 2026” on campus today, 27 August, welcoming about 3,200 new taught postgraduate/doctoral degree and MPhil/PhD programme students for the 2026/27 academic year. To meet the growing demand for professionals in artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and smart manufacturing in the digital era, Lingnan has introduced three new taught postgraduate programmes, bringing the number of offerings to a record high of 50. In addition, the University held its first-ever “Welcome Gathering for Research Postgraduate Students” to help new students adapt more quickly to Lingnan’s academic research environment.

As solid-state electrolyte research grows, so does the amount of data. The problem is that much of it remains scattered across the literature. That is where researchers at WPI-AIMR, Tohoku University, come in — with DigBat, a new platform designed to bring this information together and help map the growing landscape of solid-state electrolyte research. By connecting data from across the field, DigBat can help researchers see relationships more clearly and point toward promising directions for future battery materials research.

Hematopoietic stem cells can transform into any type of blood cell. However, this ability declines as we age. Recent research at Tohoku University uses AI to guide their deep dive into understanding which genes cause aging in stem cells.

Lingnan University held its 2026/27 academic year New Student Orientation (NSO) and Official Welcome for undergraduate students at its Tuen Mun campus today (24 August).

Lingnan University announced the establishment of the innovation and entrepreneurship platform “LU Xcelerator (LUX)” and held its Opening Ceremony today, 21 August. LUX focuses on “AI + X” and the application of agentic AI in different industries, leveraging the unique strength of Lingnan University in data science and interdisciplinary studies. Benefitting from Lingnan’s location near the Northern Metropolis, LUX will spearhead an innovative mode of collaboration between “Government, Industry, Academia, Research, and Investment” in the Greater Bay Area. This new platform will assist our students and researchers in translating innovative research into market-ready applications with tangible commercial and social value.

Researchers from the University of Osaka and Diponegoro University developed an AI-powered navigation system for cyborg cockroaches. Using onboard sensors and a multilayer perceptron, the system recognizes flat ground, climbs, descents, and holes in real time, then adapts electrical stimulation accordingly. By supporting natural climbing while reducing unnecessary steering, the approach shortened obstacle-crossing and total navigation times, reduced travel distance and stimulation, and significantly improved efficient movement across complex terrain.

Lingnan University’s research teams have achieved exceptional success at the Silicon Valley International Invention Festival 2026, with all 14 of their projects winning eight gold and six silver medals. One of the projects, the “GaitGPT: Evidence-Grounded AI for Bidirectional Clinical Gait Translation”, developed by a team led by Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science at Lingnan University and Prof Yu Lisha, Assistant Professor of Teaching of the Division of Artificial Intelligence of the School of Data Science, also received IFIA Best Invention Award issued by International Federation of Inventors' Associations and "Thailand Award for the Best International Invention and Innovation" issued by the National Research Council of Thailand, winning a total of 16 awards. This is the second consecutive year Lingnan has entered this international innovation event, and it is the Hong Kong SAR higher education institution with the greatest number of awards and gold medals.

A spokesperson for Lingnan University welcomed the results of the 2026 ShanghaiRanking's Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). Lingnan rose significantly from the 901st to 1,000th band globally last year to the 601st to 700th band this year, representing an advancement of 300 places and the biggest rise among Hong Kong SAR’s eight UGC-funded universities. The university has also risen to joint 6th place within this group. The encouraging improvement is consistent with Lingnan’s upward trend in other international university rankings in recent months, reflecting the phased results of the University’s continued strategic transformation in recent years and recognition from the international academic community.

Black hole "blast", Bacteria-detecting robot, A crab's tale, Sensors that remember, and Silk in cycling. Plus submission deadline for 2027 magazine. Read all in the latest Editor's Choice.

Japan-based Elix, Inc. and the University of Vienna, Austria announce the signing of a joint research agreement aimed at advancing drug discovery using AI technologies.