Professor Lik-Kwan Shark
Head of Applied Digital Signal & Image Processing Research Centre (ADSIP) and Advanced Digital Manufacturing Technology Research Centre (ADMT)
School of Engineering
As Chair Professor of Signal and Image Processing and a fellow of IET, he founded and heads Applied Digital Signal and Image Processing Research Centre (ADSIP) and Advanced Digital Manufacturing Technology Research Centre (ADMT). He has an extensive network of collaborators in multiple sectors, received >£13M external funding, produced >170 publications, and won awards for his cross-sector research and development of signal and image processing technologies for industrial non-destructive evaluation and medical non-invasive diagnosis.
Professor Shark is the head of two research centres which are the Applied Digital Signal and Image Processing Research Centre (ADSIP) established in 2001 and the Advanced Digital Manufacturing Technology Research Centre (ADMT) established in 2008. His main area of research has been in the field of signal and image processing, with a particular niche in cross-fertilisation of ideas and translation of approaches between industrial non-destructive evaluation of engineering structures and medical non-invasive diagnosis of patients.
In education, he is regarded as a leading pioneer of international education by being the first to bring the British style education to China. Inspired by the Chinese policy of “one country, two systems” for Hong Kong and Macau, he proposed the concept of “one school, two classes” to advocate international education in China, created an exemplar joint education model to enable Chinese students to study the initial years of the British style engineering course in China, and started the wave of Sino-British joint degree courses way back in 1993 at Shenzhen University (2 years before the Chinese Ministry of Education introducing Temporary Regulations for Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools). In research, he is unique in cross-sector signal and image processing research by exploiting the synergies between industrial non-destructive evaluation and medical non-invasive diagnosis. He has led several large-scale multi-million-pound projects, collaborated with more than 160 organisations in 21 countries worldwide, received more than £13M external funding (with the total award in excess of £83M) from a diverse range of national and international grant bodies as well as world-leading industrial companies, produced more than 170 publications, and won various academic and industrial awards. In celebration of The Queen’s diamond jubilee, he had the great honour of showing his research to HM The Queen and HRH Duke of Edinburgh in the royal visit to his research centre.
- PhD Digital Satellite Systems, Lancashire Polytechnic in collaboration with Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, 1988
- MSc Microwaves and Modern Optics, University College London, 1984
- BSc(Hons) Electronic & Communications Engineering, Polytechnic of North London, 1983
- Best Paper Award in the Area of Application, International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods (ICPRAM), 2015
- Best Paper Award, International Conference on Intelligent Automation and Robotics, 2014
- Diamond jubilee royal visit by HM The Queen with HRH Duke of Edinburgh, 2012
- The Times Higher Education Research Project of the Year Award (shortlisted), 2011
- Distinguished Visiting Professor Award, Beijing Municipal Higher Education Commission, 2010
- Best Paper, British Conference on NDT, 2009
- Best Research Centre Award, UCLan, 2007
- The Sir Frank Whittle Award, 2004
- Best Paper, British Conference on NDT, 2003
- Innovation Award, BAE Systems, 2002
- Innovation Award, BAE Systems, 2000
- Signal and Image Processing
- Professor Shark is a fellow of IET, and holds a number of honorary positions which include Visiting Professor of Lancaster University
- Guest Professor of Beijing Institute of Technology, Kunming University of Science & Technology, and North China University of Technology
- Distinguished Visiting Professor of Beijing Municipal Higher Education Commission funded under the Outstanding Talents Programme
- Visiting Chair Professor of the China State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Process Industry Automation System and Equipment Technology.
- He is an associate editor of IET Journal of Image Processing and Avestia Journal of Machine Intelligence and Data Science (JMIDS); an Inderscience editorial board member of International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology (IJCAT) and International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control (IJMIC).
- In addition, he is an elected member of EPSRC peer review college
- Panel evaluator of European Research Council and Research Executive Agency
- Proposal reviewer of the Leverhulme Trust, Medical Research Council, Royal Society, Science and Technology Facilities Council
- International reviewer/panel chair of grant bodies in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore and USA
- Specialist adviser of Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation.
Signal and image processing is one of the most awesome and ubiquitous technologies that is shaping the world of tomorrow. Over the years, Professor Shark has worked on a broad spectrum of application-driven and user-led research projects in collaboration with multiple disciplines, and transformed numerous innovative ideas into reality by developing advanced computational signal and image processing systems. Among a long list of examples includes collaboration with environmental scientists on large-scale immersive exploration of multi-modality remote sensing data; with manufacturing engineers on automatic inspection and prognosis of advanced safety-critical structures; with oncologists to achieve high-precision radiotherapy; with physiotherapists on immersive rehabilitation using multi-form bio-feedback; with psychologists on 4D facial expression recognition; with rheumatologists to pioneer acoustic emission for joint assessment; with sign linguists on dynamic gesture recognition for direct sign writing; and with sports scientists on interactive and immersive digital sport environments. Particularly noteworthy are his contributions to advancing non-destructive evaluation of engineering structures in the aerospace/submarine sector and non-invasive diagnosis of patients in the medical sector by exploiting the synergies between these two seemingly disparate fields. He has produced more than 170 publications including 1 book, 3 invited book chapters, 8 invited journal papers and 4 best conference papers.
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- View their unique and persistent identifier on the ORCiD registry
- Full list of publications and articles on CLoK
- Applied Digital Signal and Image Processing Research Centre (ADSIP)
- Advanced Digital Manufacturing Technology Research Centre (ADMT)
- Professor Shark has supervised 30 PhD, 6 MPhil, 2 MSc(Res) to completion:
- Weld defect detection using ultrasonic phased arrays, Brian CASSELS, PhD, 2019
- Static and dynamic analysis of near-infrared dorsal hand vein images for biometric applications, Huai Geng ZHENG, PhD, 2017
- Distortion correction for non-planar deformable projection displays through homography shaping and projected image warping, Onoise Gerald KIO, PhD, 2016
- Minimisation of energy consumption variance in manufacturing through production schedule manipulation, Christopher DUERDEN, PhD, 2016
- Imageability and intelligibility in 3D game environments examining experiential and cultural influence on the design process, Alan SUMMERS, PhD, 2014
- Biometric person identification using near-infrared hand-dorsa vein images, Kefeng LI, PhD, 2013
- Aerodynamic design and analysis of small horizontal axis wind turbine blades, Xinzi TANG, PhD, 2013
- Development and management of high-fidelity test technology for comprehensive performance evaluation of electronic warfare systems in multi-thread environments, Michael PYWELL, PhD (by Publication), 2013
- Development of immersive and interactive virtual reality environment for two-player table tennis, Yingzhu LI, PhD, 2012
- Diffeomorphic image registration with applications to deformation modelling between multiple data sets, Bartlomiej Wladyslaw PAPIEZ, PhD, 2012
- Discovery of acoustic emission based biomarkers for clinical assessment of knee joints, Hongzhi CHEN, PhD, 2011
- Spherical image processing for immersive visualisation and view generation, Xiao Ying GUAN, PhD, 2011
- Dynamic hand gesture recognition for real-time interaction with virtual immersive environment, Gan LU, PhD, 2011
- Development and evaluation of an electromyography biofeedback-based virtual reality system for hand motion rehabilitation, Sha MA, PhD, 2010
- Monte Carlo solution to the inverse problem of ultrasonic defect characterisation, Stephen MEIN, PhD, 2009
- 3-D facial expression representation using statistical shape models, Wei QUAN, PhD, 2009
- Improved qualification of vascular abnormalities in CE-MRA images, Dafni STAMPOULI, PhD, 2009
- Estimation of 3D human motion kinematics model from multiple cameras, Chunxiao ZHANG, PhD, 2009
- Automatic pre-treatment validation in radiotherapy by computer aided 3D-2D image alignment, Xin CHEN, PhD, 2008
- Image-based rendering for visualisation of 3D scenes in pseudo real-time, Bo TANG, PhD, 2008
- Development of image processing systems for cosmic ray effects analysis, Zoltan TOROK, PhD, 2007
- Advancing acoustography by multidimensional signal processing techniques, Michael BACH, PhD, 2006
- Feature-based automatic registration of images with 2D and 3D models, Yan ZHANG, PhD, 2006
- Selective lossless retention of critical thermal data within highly compressed thermal video sequences, Geoff HALL, PhD, 2003
- Lossless image compression for aerospace non-destructive testing applications, Xin Yu LIN, PhD, 2003
- Registration of images containing rigid structures using deformable models and its medical application, Jian-Kun SHEN, PhD, 2003
- Effective and efficient non-destructive testing of large and complex shaped aircraft structures, John Patrick SMITH, PhD, 2003
- Automatic image alignment for clinical evaluation of patient setup errors in radiotherapy, Qinglang SU, PhD, 2003
- Development and analysis of hierarchical feedforward neural network systems for classification of motor neurone disease based on magnetic resonance spectra, Mohamed REFAEE, PhD, 2001
- Low-noise frequency synthesis and picosecond timing for satellite laser ranging systems, Josef Karl KOLBL, PhD, 2001
- A total of more than £15M has been awarded to more than 60 projects, which includes external funding in excess of £13M awarded by various grant bodies (such as Arthritis Research Campaign, British Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, European Regional Development Fund, EU Framework Programmes, Higher Education Funding Council for England, Medical Research Council, Ministry of Defence and Regional Growth Fund) and industrial companies (such as Alenia, BAE Systems and PACCAR), and internal funding just under £2M.
- The total value of all funded projects is around £85M with 13 large-scale multi-million-pound projects.
- Among more than 160 collaborating organisations in 21 countries worldwide, there were top aerospace companies such as Airbus, Alenia, BAE Systems, Dassault, EADS and Smiths Aerospace; prestigious national research institutes such as the Industrial Material Institute of the National Research Council Canada, French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA), Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas (FORTH) in Greece, Signals and Images Laboratory of the National Research Council (CNR) in Italy, and National Nuclear Laboratory in the UK; world-leading UK universities such as Bristol, Manchester, Lancaster, Liverpool, Sheffield, and Warwick; and major regional hospitals such as Blackpool Victoria, Christie and Royal Preston.
- General chair of one international conference (AECRIS)
- Member of more than 70 international conferences organising and programme committees (which include COMADEM, ICISP, ICMIC, ICSPS, ICWAPR, IEEE SMC, MediViz, SITIS, VISAPP)
- Chair/organiser of more than 10 national/international workshops/special sessions.
Telephone:+44 (0)1772 893253
Email: Email:Professor Lik-Kwan Shark
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