Please also see our lab news: URL

  • November 2022: One paper is accepted by AAAI 2023.

  • June 2022: I am a member of the CircularChem team, which has been shortlisted for the Societal Engagement Award by Heriot-Watt University.

  • February 2022: Our PRIME project is officially funded by EPSRC: URL. Heriot-Watt is awarded £1.46M (approx £1.8M 100% FEC).

  • January 2022: I am awarded a NERC discipline hopping fund to work with Dr Zulin Zhang at James Hutton Institute. The project is about using machine learning to understand spatio-temporal patterns of toxic chemicals in Scotland.

  • December 2021: We are principally funded by ESPRC for a project named “Protecting Minority Ethnic Communities Online (PRIME)”. The total value is around £3.34M (100% FEC), and Heriot-Watt will receive around £1.5M. There will be a three-year postdoc working with me. A full PhD scholarship will be open very soon. More information to come in early 2022.

  • August 2021: Congratulations to Dr. Rachana Patel, who won the runner-up awards for Data Lab MSc project competition (over 150 Data Lab MSc students from 12 Scottish universities). Project Video. Also congratulation to her for winning the Alison Cawswy Memorial Prize for being the most deserving student of the MSc cohort of 2020/21.

  • June 2021: Two MSc students (Agne Zainyte and Dr. Rachana Patel) that I supervise published two papers at SICSA XAI 2021. Another two papers by the RAInS team were also accepted.

  • June 2021: The DCEE project is funded by EPSRC (led by Imperial): check this link

  • May 2021: Congratulations to Dr Anthony Chapman, who passed his viva at Aberdeen University.

  • January 2021: I was invited to be a scientific advisor for AiBIOLOGICS ltd., an AI start-up company which is currently developing AI techniques to facilitate COVID vaccine development.

  • December 2020：Congratulations to Dr Musa Karatu, who passed his viva at Aberdeen University.

  • July 2020: Congratulations to Dr Abubakr Awad, who passed his viva at Aberdeen University. Dr Awad secured the prestigous Elphinstone Scholarship at Aberdeen for his PhD study, and he was also partially involved in the Royal Society funded project. He is now working as a KTP associate at University of Nottingham.

  • May 2020: Happy to become a member of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics: https://www.edinburgh-robotics.org/academics/wei-pang.

  • December 2019: Happy to serve as a PC member again this year for IJCAI: https://ijcai20.org/.

  • November 2019: We are principally funded by Cancer Research UK (up to £100K) for a new project titled “Haem-AI: Early cancer diagnosis in Haematological Malignancies by AI”. I will be working with pathologists, physicists, and AI researchers from Oxford, Imperial, Warwick, and Swansea to explore the use of AI for early detection of mycosis fungoides and myeloproliferative neoplasms (two types of severe cancers).

  • October 2019: News for DeepSwarm: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/ncs/news/13396/.

  • September 2019: Our paper “DeepSwarm: Optimising Convolutional Neural Networks using Swarm Intelligence” has won the best paper award at UKCI 2019 (19th Annual UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence) among all 45 accepted papers. Paper, arxiv, Code Award Certificate.

    Our work has been mentioned in automl.org, aitopics.org (from AAAI), deepai.org, papers with code (https://paperswithcode.com/), eyes-on.ai, CSDN (a major Chinese software developer network). “Awesome System for Machine Learning” (http://www.lib4dev.in/info/HuaizhengZhang/Awesome-System-for-Machine-Learning/164433070) We received 231 stars on github.

  • August 2019: from 1st January 2020, I will move to Edinburgh and take up the post of Associate Professor at School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University.
  • May 2019: The CRUK funded joint project with Oxford and Middlesex ( Using AI for Early Detection of Oesophageal Cancer) has started. See the following project information from CRUK Oxford Centre. See the following information from CRUK for two of my funded projects (Project 3 and Project 5).
  • May 2019: I was invited by UKRI to attend the UKRI AI regional workshop, in which we help to form UKRI's future AI funding strategies by providing our input and opinions on AI.
  • February 2019: I am invited to be a PC member for LOD2019 (The Fifth International Conference on Machine L earning, O ptimization, and D ata Science).
  • January 2019: I am happy to serve as a PC member for IJCAI 2019 in Macau, China.
  • January 2019: I was invited to attend a CRUK/EPSRC/STFC joint workshop on AI for cancer early detection. I was notionally awarded two projects during the workshop with researchers from Oxford, Middlesex, UCL, National Physics Laboratory, Institute for Cancer Research, Leeds, and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
  • October 2018: I secured a BBSRC funded eastbio DTP (BB/M010996/1) PhD studentship (~£95.2K) as co-supervisor (50%). This is one of the five eastbio PhD studentships within the theme of AI/ML. Project title: Improving forecasting and management of fish stocks and forest pests using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
  • August 2018: I am promoted from Associate College membership to Full College membership of EPSRC Peer Review College.
  • August 2018: I will be one of the technical co-chairs of ICDIS 2019 (The 2nd International Conference on Data Intelligence and Security).
  • June 2018: ICCCS 2018 is on CCTV 4 (China Central Television) news, and I am happy to serve as a PC member for this conference since 2016 (I am also Session Chair and best paper panel member in ICCCS 2016).
  • June 2018: A fully funded PhD studentship was awarded by Data Lab (I am the co-supervisor, Lead Supervisor: Dr Yaji Sripada, the other supervisor: Dr Frank Guerin).
  • March 2018: I am awarded a new EPSRC project Realising Accountable Intelligent Systems (RAInS) (PI: Prof Pete Edwards, value in total £1.36M) with researchers from Cambridge and Oxford.
  • February 2018: I will be the co-chair of The 31st International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning, which will be held at IJCAI-ECAI 2018.
  • January 2018: Our ESPRC project "Manufacturing Immortality" featured on BBC Radio 4 morning news (starting from 1:43:56): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kq1gr
  • July 2017: I am promoted to Senior Lecturer with effect from 1 August 2017.
  • July 2017: We have been awarded £19.9K from Scottish Funding Council on the community cinema statistics project. Industrial partners include INDY Cinema Group Ltd, Driftwood Cinema Limited, North East Arts Touring, and Open Cinema Foundation. Academic partner: University of Glasgow. £9.95K goes to Aberdeen.
  • July 2017: I obtained First-class Science and Technology Award of Jilin Province, China with my Chinese collaborators (Prof Lan Huang, Prof Yanchun Liang, Prof Yan Wang etc) for our research on Swarm Intelligence Optimisation Algorithms. It has been my great pleasure to work with these preeminent researchers over the last 15 years!
  • May 2017: I was selected to participate in the EPSRC New Industry Systems Sandpit, and we have been notionally awarded by EPSRC a £2.71M project titled "Manufacturing immortality". and I was awarded as Aberdeen's sole investigator ~420K (~£360K from EPSRC). Other project members include Bristol, Manchester, Northumbria, Cranfield, Lancaster, and Sheffield Hallam. Project partners include CENSIS, Data Lab, Dstl, Siemens, AFC Energy, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, ITM Power, Zentraxa.
  • March 2017: I have been funded by Royal Society for an international exchanges scheme from March 2017 to March 2019.
  • January 2017: I was invited by EPSRC to attend the ICT Theme Early Career Workshop.
  • December 2016: I won the best paper runner-up award in The 12th International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications (ADMA 2016), Gold Coast, Australia. I attended the conference and made the presentation.
  • November 2016: I became an EPSRC Peer Review Associate College Member.
  • November 2015: Scientists in Westminster reception organised by Royal Society (Photo with Kirsty Blackman MP at the House of Commons).
  • October 2015: I was featured on the cover of Royal Society of Edinburgh Newsletter (2015 Autumn Cover Page): royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/publications/ReSourcE/15Autumn.pdf
  • March 2015: I was selected in the 2015 Scottish Crucible: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/staffnet/news/7569/; http://www.abdn.ac.uk/staffnet/news/7910/ ; https://scottishcrucible.org.uk/alumni/2015-cruciblists/
  • March 2015: Our team was awarded a contributor membership (valued at €20,000) of Digital Catapult for winning the competition in 2015 Environmental Data Exchange Hack at Digital Catapult. project slides
  • March 2015: I became one of the first 30 members of READIE ( Europe's Research Alliance for a Digital Economy).