Interaction Design and Technologies 

Course content Make your input really count as a postgraduate student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Traditional computer science research covers the hardware and software of computer systems and their applications. Computer science programs at HKUST emphasize an integrated approach to the study of computers and computing methods to collect, process, analyze and transmit information to support relevant and useful applications in modern life. The Department's goal is to offer a full range of postgraduate courses and research projects to meet the needs and interests of our students and to help solve relevant problems for society. Our world-class faculty members engage in cutting-edge research at the heart of the information technology revolution and our postgraduate students are involved in both applied and fundamental research. The Department has 50 full-time faculty members and 180 postgraduate students. Computer science is still a young field. The world is only just beginning to realize the potential of information technology. The Department and its programs prepare students to meet the exciting challenges that await and to generate new advances in computing that will fuel future progress. The MPhil program seeks to strengthen students' knowledge in computer science and expose them to issues involved in the development, scientific, educational and commercial applications of computer systems. Students are required to undertake coursework and successfully complete a thesis to demonstrate competence in research. Research Foci The Department's research involves many different areas: Artificial Intelligence Machine learning, data mining and pattern recognition, knowledge representation and reasoning, robotics and sensor-based activity recognition, multi-agent and game theory, and speech and language processing. Data, Knowledge and Information Management Large-scale data management, modeling and distribution encompassing web query processing, information retrieval and web search, data mining, enterprise systems, high-performance data management systems on modern computers, and database support for science applications. Human-Computer Interaction Augmented reality, multi-touch interaction, crowdsourcing, multimodal communication, affective computer, visual analytics of big data, intelligent interface for robots, E-learning, healthcare and e-commerce. Networking and Computer Systems Pervasive computing and sensor networks, peer-to-peer computing, grid computing, high-performance switches and routers, video delivery and multicasting, multimedia networking, MAC protocols for ad-hoc networks, web cache management, DDOS detection and defense, and resource management and allocation in optical networks. Software Technology and Applications Software engineering, data mining for software analysis and debugging, computer music, cryptography and security, internet computing. Theoretical Computer Science Combinatorial optimization, performance analysis techniques, computational geometry, formal languages and machines, graph algorithms, and algorithmic combinatorial game theory. Vision and Graphics Computer vision, computer graphics, medical image analysis, biometric systems, and video processing. Facilities The Department has excellent facilities to support its programs and is committed to keeping its computing facilities up to date. There are about 700 workstations and PCs, including those in four teaching laboratories, three MS Windows Labs and one Linux lab. The Department also runs several research laboratories with specific facilities, including the computer engineering, database, Human-Computer Interaction Initiative, vision and graphics labs. Specialized project laboratories include: -The HCI lab, has a 360 degree circular CCD-camera capturing system with a 4x3 large display array and 120" rear projected 3D active stereo system, and large-sized multi-touch panels, linked with various physiological sensors for gesture/body tracking; -The Human Language Technology Center, with various corpora and a Linux cluster; -The System and Media Laboratory, partially funded by Deutsche Telekom, focusing mobile computing and any interesting topics related to social network; and -The Networking group, that maintains different sets of network cluster for Data center and cloud computing research. -Different research groups maintain their own CPU/GPU cluster customized for different research need. In addition, the Department manages a pool of Linux servers as CPU/GPU cluster for general research projects demanding significant system resources, and acquires a GPU cluster for the whole University. The file servers are connected with one HDS AMS2100 and one HDS HUS110 Storage Area Network (SAN), with a total capacity of more than 60TB. There is also a pool of high performance servers with GPUs dedicated for undergraduate courses on parallel computing and Big Data analysis.