The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) joined hands with the Department of Division of Information Science of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to organize Academic Symposium on Big Data on CUHK campus from 23 to 24 September 2014.  The Symposium was co-organized by the Big Data Decision Analytics Research Centre (BDDARC), Office of Academic Links (China) of CUHK and Beijing-Hong Kong Academic Exchange Centre.

Guests attending the opening ceremony included Academician Prof. Joseph Sung, Vice-Chancellor of CUHK, Mr. Ji Jianjun, Vice Inspector of Department of Education, Science and Technology Department of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in HKSAR; Academician Prof. Chai Tianyou, Director of Division of Information Science of NSFC; Academician Prof. Xu Zongben, Vice-President of Xi'an Jiaotong University; Mr. Zou Liyao, Deputy Director-General, Bureau of International Cooperation of NSFC; Mr. Kwok Ming Wa, Vice President of Beijing-Hong Kong Academic Exchange Centre; Mr. Patrick Huen, Honorary Fellow of CUHK and Steering Committee Member of BDDARC, and Prof. Helen Meng, Chairman of the Symposium Organizing Committee and the Department of Systems Engineering Management, and Director of BDDARC.

Over 130 scholars and postgraduate students from the Mainland and Hong Kong in the field of Big Data attended the Symposium and 28 talks were delivered. Academician Prof. Chai Tianyou and Prof. Dennis Lo, Associate Dean of Medicine of CUHK, gave keynote speeches on the first day of the event. The Symposium provided a platform for intellectual exchanges between scientists in the Mainland and Hong Kong, stimulating thoughts and ideas to strengthen the research development in Big Data and its cross-disciplinary research areas in Health & Medicine, Earth Science, City Management, Social Network, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Finance Engineering. CUHK representatives also explored collaboration opportunities with the Mainland scholars during the two-day activities. The number of participants this year is a record high. For official website of the 2014 Symposium, please refer to http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/oalc/nsfc2014/.

Since 2007, CUHK and NSFC have co-organized annual academic symposium with different themes. Previous topics included Bio-informatics and Its Applications, Chemical Biology, Condensed Matter and Optical Physics, Developmental Studies in Health and Diseases, Control and Automation, Climate Change, and Digestive Disease. For previous Symposiums, please visit http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/oalc/en/act/sem.htm.