Seminar

Abstract
The growth of data streams and data analysis will significantly impact developments in the 21st century. Big data will play a key role in shaping the design of products, systems and services by making them smarter, better connected, more efficient and widely accessible. Data will become a powerful economic engine. Data analysis has been enlarging its footprint in business and engineering applications for the last two decades. In particular, the two labels of data science and big data have emerged recently, attracting attention and receiving massive press coverage. Expectations from data science are enormous. In the research community, the interest in data is not new, as it has accompanied developments in science and practice for centuries. The novelty is in the scale at which the data is available, its growth and the acknowledgement that data research has been equated to data science. The industrial engineering profession can be at the forefront of applying big data analysis and research in a number of business sectors.

Hong Kong’s economy is undergoing transformation which creates opportunities and challenges for research at the University of Hong Kong. Research opportunities for the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering in collaboration with other academic unites are presented. A two-stage process has been used to elicit feasible research opportunities with maximum potential for success. At the first stage, nine research areas has been identified. At the second stage three areas were given attention, namely: innovation science, digital awareness devices, and data-driven healthcare research. Examples of successful clinical medicine projects initiated in a small data environment are discussed. The insights gained in these projects are useful in undertaking big data projects.