The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's engineering professors Matthew McKay and Bing Zeng from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering were recently awarded the 2011 Stephen O Rice Prize in the Field of Communications Theory and the 2011 Circuits and Systems Society CSVT Transactions Best Paper Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) respectively. This is the first time such distinguished international awards have been presented to researchers from Hong Kong.
Prof McKay collaborated on the paper titled "MIMO Multichannel Beamforming: SER and Outage Using New Eigenvalue Distributions of Complex Noncentral Wishart Matrices", which appeared in the IEEE Transactions on Communications. The innovative new results in this project push forward research on multiple-antenna wireless communication systems, which enable very high rates of information to be sent across the world without additional power or bandwidth. As such, this project lays influential grounds for the next generation of wireless communication technologies.
Published in the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Prof Bing Zeng co-authored the paper named "Directional Discrete Cosine Transforms - A New Framework for Image Coding" which is a ground-breaking demonstration of achievement in maximizing coding efficiency with using minimum digital image or video data, saving up to 30% cost with the same input under conventional format of data transfer. Its revolutionary ideas have remarkably motivated new frontiers in the transformation of video coding standard.
Both prestigious annual awards are presented to authors of the best papers published in the publications of IEEE, the world's largest professional association in advancing technological innovation and excellence. The publications are the most renowned ones in their respective areas, acknowledging the best research work among all institutions and researchers worldwide while honoring researchers who produced the most significant contributions during a given year.
Prof Zeng received the Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Engineering degrees from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and the PhD degree from Tampere University of Technology, Finland, all in electrical engineering. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Toronto and Concordia University and was a Visiting Researcher with Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of HKUST.
Prof Matthew R. McKay (S'03-M'07) received the combined B.E. degree in electrical engineering and the B.IT. degree in computer science from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, in 2002, and the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2006. He then worked as a Research Scientist at the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Sydney, Australia, prior to joining the faculty at HKUST in 2007, where he is currently an Assistant Professor. He is also a member of the Center for Wireless Information Technology at HKUST. His research interests include communications and signal processing; in particular the analysis and design of MIMO systems, random matrix theory, information theory, and wireless ad-hoc and sensor networks.
Prof McKay was awarded the University Medal upon graduating from the Queensland University of Technology. He and his co-authors have been awarded a Best Student Paper Award at IEEE ICASSP 2006, Best Student Paper Award at IEEE VTC 2006-Spring, Best Paper Award at IWCMC 2010, Best Paper Award at IEEE Globecom 2010, and Best Paper Award at IEEE ICC 2011. Most recently, he has also received a 2010 Young Author Best Paper Award by the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the 2011 Young Investigator Research Excellence Award by the School of Engineering at HKUST.
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