Two PhD Graduates in DS Won the Outstanding Research Thesis Award 2024

The Department of Data Science (DS) is proud to announce that two of its recent PhD graduates - Dr Zhenling MO (Supervised by Prof Zijun ZHANG, currently a DS Postdoc) and Dr Jiayue HAN (Supervised by Prof Xiang ZHOU), have been honoured with the Outstanding Research Thesis Award 2024 conferred by the Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies at CityUHK. This award recognizes exceptional research work, and aim to promote and celebrate outstanding research achievements and contributions at CityUHK.

Dr MO’s thesis, entitled “Machine Fault Diagnosis Based on Causality Inspired Learning” advances machine fault diagnosis by integrating causality-inspired learning into deep models, enhancing interpretability, generalization, and noise resilience through novel frameworks and theoretical insights. Dr HAN’s thesis, entitled “Value-Gradient Algorithm for Optimal Control and Residual-Quantile Adjustment Method” proposes a novel value-gradient-based algorithm for optimal control with provable convergence, and introduces a residual-quantile adjustment technique to improve the training efficiency of physics-informed neural networks for solving high-dimensional partial differential equations.

Both theses were placed in the top 2-5% by all the internal and external examiners based on quality and originality of the research, and also clarity, accuracy and presentation of the thesis.

The Department extends its congratulations to Dr MO and Dr HAN on this well-deserved recognition and applauds their contributions to advancing the frontiers of data science.