Dr. YEUNG Sai-Kit Appointed as Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Graphics

Dr. YEUNG Sai-Kit, Associate Professor at the Division of Integrative Systems & Design and the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, was recently appointed as an associate editor of ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), a leading international scientific journal in the field of computer graphics. Published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the bimonthly journal has an impact factor of 5.414, which ranks the first place among computer graphics journals by Google Scholar.

The appointment is a recognition of Dr. Yeung's contributions and academic achievements in the computer graphics area, especially his pioneering work on data-driven functional layout design "Make it Home" in SIGGRAPH 2011, and his work on 3D vision and computational design. As the first in HKUST and the only editorial board member representing Hong Kong, Dr. Yeung will work closely with an international team of academic and industry experts to keep up the momentum and scale new heights in the next three years.

"It is really a true honor for me to serve the ACM TOG editorial board and it means a lot to me as I am the first one from my alma mater to perform this role. I believe this appointment will encourage our students to pursue high quality research," said Dr. Yeung

TOG has a strong synergy with New York-based ACM SIGGRAPH (ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques), the premiere conference organization in graphics. With over 50 years of history, ACM SIGGRAPH creates a platform for researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists, and professionals to exchange the latest updates and promote cross-disciplinary interaction on computer graphics and interactive techniques. Of the six issues published by TOG each year, two are special issues containing the papers presented at the annual SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia conferences. Conversely, authors of papers published in the regular issues of TOG can present their work at the conferences.

Holder of three degrees from HKUST (PhD (ELEC), MPhil (BIEN) & BEng (CPEG)), Dr. Yeung conducts cutting-edge research on 3D reconstruction, understanding, modeling, and redesign, and uses AI techniques for design and content generation, human-robot interaction, and novel algorithms to enhance VR and AR applications.

Recently he has been working closely with marine biologists to develop novel computer vision and graphics techniques and integrative systems, such as underwater semantic simultaneous localization and mapping for marine robots navigation and surveying, 3D reconstruction of local coral communities, and an automated platform for culturing shellfish. These aim to solve a wide range of problems relating to marine biodiversity and sustainability.