Professor Cheung Yiu-ming received RGC Senior Research Fellowship for project on advancing facial reenactment detection for speaker verification against fake videos

Professor Cheung Yiu-ming, Chair Professor in Artificial Intelligence of the Department of Computer Science, has been honoured with the RGC Senior Research Fellow Scheme (SRFS) 2023/24 in recognition of his remarkable research capabilities and the potential impact of his proposed project entitled “Facial Reenactment in a Monocular Video Stream for Speaker Verification and Its Applications”. The project aims to develop innovative AI-based methods to detect facial reenactment (FR) in a monocular video stream to fight fake videos by speaker verification.

“I am deeply honoured to receive this prestigious award,” Professor Cheung said, “This project aims to address the significant security challenges arising from the emergence of FR techniques by providing an effective solution: an FR detection approach based solely on visual information. The research outcomes will have wide-ranging applications in various FR-related domains and will also contribute to advancements in computer vision and machine learning research."

The RGC SRFS is introduced to provide sustained support to exceptionally outstanding academics to facilitate their research and promote research excellence. The ten SRFS awardees were selected for their research capability, contribution and potential impact of their proposed research project, proven research track record, leadership quality and vision in the chosen area of research. The selection panel highly commended Professor Cheung’s submitted research proposal and recognised his enthusiasm demonstrated during the interview. He will receive a fellowship grant of about HK$7.8 million over a period of 60 months.

The recognition of Professor Cheung's research capabilities and the potential impact of his project demonstrate the significance of his contributions to the fields of artificial intelligence and visual computing technology. It is expected that his groundbreaking work will pave the way for advancements in artificial intelligence and have far-reaching implications in various applications and industries.