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Two start-up projects by PhD student Cobi Zhouming Xu have won awards at regional competitions on innovation and entrepreneurship. Cobi is a student in the Department of Mathematics and his research is on mathematical methods (deep learning, neural networks algorithms) for multi-omics and precision medicine. Drawing on his prior experience working in the financial industry, Cobi co-founded two start-up projects in distinct fields – fintech and precision medicine – under the supervision of his PhD supervisor Professor Michael Ng. The project teams have lined up AI talents from famous firms and top universities: Facebook, Morgan Stanley, Walmart Lab, the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and HKU. 

The fintech project, “AI Phoenix”, is a high-performance collaborative modelling platform for financial data. The platform is dedicated to the development and application of advanced privacy computing, swarm learning technologies, and deep neural networks to solve problems such as the lack of dimensions of financial data in banks, data isolation in both intra- and inter-bank scenarios, the inefficiency of existing collaborative learning frameworks, and the high threshold for implementation. It helps banks to improve the efficiency of data analysis and utilisation of data resources while reducing the idle time of servers and the barrel effect, resulting in much more accurate user portraits and efficient user demand analysis. The project won Gold Prize at the 8th “Creation of Youth” China Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (Internet section) and Second Prize at the 8th Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition of University Students of Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.

The project “AI Smart Medication System for Chronic Diseases” is about the application of AI in precision medicine. Inspired by Cobi’s volunteer experience in supporting medical teams in Beijing and Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the project is committed to providing cloud-based AI-empowered analytical solutions to enhance precision medicine. The system tries to offer technological remedies to the problem of medical data dispersion, and achieve high-accuracy analyses while preserving the highest standard of data privacy. The project won Second Prize at the 10th “Winning in Guangzhou” and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Entrepreneurship Competition of College Students, and the start-up is now providing services to China’s top hospitals including Beijing Chao-yang Hospital, Wuhan Union Hospital, and Shenzhen People’s Hospital.