BUS News
BBA students explore academia with quality research outputs
15 Jun, 2022
The School of Business launched the BizSpark Business Research Competition for BBA students as a new initiative to celebrate the School’s 65th Anniversary. The Final Conference was held on 11 June, with participation from highly-motivated BBA students and academic faculty.Prof. Ed Snape, Dean of the HKBU School of Business explained that “BizSpark aims to encourage undergraduate students to sharpen their research skills, and provides a platform to showcase their high-quality research work.”
The competition welcomed two streams of submissions: academic research papers and company-based consultancy projects. A total of 23 submissions were received across different BBA concentrations, from Year 2 to Year 4, covering various topics such as the impact of the worldwide pandemic on digital banking, HR management, and machine learning; and the study of cloud gaming strategy, green loans, and the trade war.
Seven finalists were shortlisted to present their research to the judges at the Final Conference. The judges were impressed by the impeccable presentation and creative ideas. Ma Hejian/ Max (BBA Information Systems and e-Business Management, Year 4), and LAW Ming Yiu, Sam (BBA Marketing, Year 4) were crowned the Gold Prize in the academic research paper and company-based consultancy project categories, respectively.
The former awardee’s project, entitled “An Empirical Study of Optimal Combination of Algorithms for Prediction-Based Portfolio Optimization Model using Machine Learning over Covid-19 Period”, found that the stock portfolio built up with algorithms during the COVID period had higher return with higher risks. The codes developed in this research will become open source on GitHub and available for further research and industry usage.
The latter awardee’s project, “Cloud Gaming Service for HKBN to Target Young Audience”, identified cloud gaming’s attractiveness for young people, and provided a marketing strategy for launching and long-term development for the company.
Joining the judging panels were:
- Dr. Zach LEE, Associate Professor Department of Management & Marketing, Durham University
- Mr. Alvin Leung, Regional Head of Learning Academy, APAC, Persolkelly Consulting Ltd.
- Prof. Samson Tai, Professor of Practice, Department of Finance and Decision Sciences
- Dr. Ting CHEN, Associate Professor, Department of Economics
- Dr. Yanju LIU, Assistant Professor, Department of Accountancy and Law
- Dr. Lucia Fung, Associate Director BBA (Hons), School of Business
