The University of Macau (UM) Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City (SKL-IoTSC), and Institute of Collaborative Innovation (ICI) recently held the International Conference on High Performance Big Data and Intelligent Systems (HBPD &IS) and the 2021 Macao Symposium on Cloud Computing and Intelligent Driving (CCID). Both events involved in-person and virtual elements, and attracted nearly 120 participants, including scholars, researchers, and students, from around the world. The three-day conferences provided a platform for participants to share their research results and exchange ideas on academic affairs and technological innovation.

According to Prof Xu Chengzhong, chair of the conferences, who is also chair professor of computer and information sciences and dean of the FST, technological innovation has become more important than ever in the face of the new wave of global technological revolution and industrial transformation. The HPBD & IS brought together the research strengths of scholars in China and abroad and has successfully facilitated exchange and collaboration in a number of countries The CCID, held for the first time in Macao, attracted many experts from mainland China. The two conferences included in-depth discussions on high performance computing, big data, internet of things, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. Prof Xu expressed hope that the events would help to create opportunities for collaboration in related fields and identify opportunities of and challenges facing the industry in order to further promote the development of technological innovation.

The conferences were sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society, the China Computer Federation, and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence. A number of international experts of computer sciences served as keynote speakers, including David A Bader, Distinguished Professor of the Institute for Data Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology; Edwin Hancock, emeritus professor of York University in the United Kingdom and member of the Royal Academy of Engineering; Tarek Abdelzaher, professor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who is also a member of the IEEE and the Association for Computing Machinery; and Chen Shengyong, Distinguished Professor of Tianjin Polytechnic University, in the online session, as well as Guo Minyi, chair professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Ou Yongsheng, professor of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Zhang Yinqian and Hao Qi, a professor and an associate professor of the Southern University of Science and technology, in the offline session. Professors and students from the FST, the SKL-IoTSC, and the ICI also attended the conferences.