Founded in January 2009, UAIS Lab, School of Information Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University to conduct research in the fields of pervasive computing theory and application, psychophysiology, affective computing, semantic web and ontology. The laboratory implements the laboratory director responsibility system under the guidance of the academic committee. It has a young research team with multidisciplinary characteristics with the average age under 40 years old. The researchers have professional backgrounds in computer, clinical medicine, psychology, bio-sensors and information processing. At present, there are 11 professors, 11 associate professors, 3 engineers and a group of doctoral and postgraduate students. 2 members have been awarded National Talent Programs, 1 for the Gansu Provincial Leading Talent Program, and 1 has been honored as a National Advanced Worker.
The laboratory undertakes the construction of multiple scientific research platforms, including the Ministry of Education Engineering Research Center for Open-Source Software and Real-Time Systems, the International Science and Technology Cooperation Base for Ubiquitous Affective Computing of Specific Populations in Western China, the Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Wearable Devices, and the Joint Research Center for Cognitive Neural Sensing Technology of Lanzhou University and Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In recent years, the lab has undertaken a wide range of research projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Fundamental Research Program of China (973 Program), the Science and Technology Innovation 2030 – Major Project on Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, the National Key R&D Program, international cooperation projects funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the European Union, industry collaboration projects, as well as projects supported by Lanzhou University’s “985 Project” and “211 Project” development initiatives. It has also established joint laboratories with renowned domestic and overseas research institutions including the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), to enhance international academic exchanges and jointly cultivate high-level scientific and technological talents.
Members of the laboratory team have successively earned a series of prestigious awards, including the 2014 Innovation Talent Award of the Overseas Chinese Community in China, the 2016 First-Class Award for Technological Invention of the Ministry of Education, the 2017 Second-Class Gansu Provincial Patent Award, the 2018 Second-Class National Award for Technological Invention, the 2019 China Patent Gold Award, the 2022 Special-Class Gansu Provincial Natural Science Award, and the 2023 National Innovation and Endeavor Award.

 
 
 
Research overview
 
      With innovative developments in Computer Science, e.g. Pervasive Computing, Affective/Cognitive Computing, and their amazing applications, the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has been impacted by some emerging research and technologies, such as, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), Electrocenphlogram Interface (EEGI), NHCI/NI (Neural Human-Computer Interface), and Cognitive Interaction etc. I believe that Cognitive/Neural Interface, no matter what it should be called, may perhaps be one of the most promising and life altering technologies in existence today. The implementation of these technologies could launch the world into a new era, especially, in the ways of Assisted living, Health Care, E-commerce, Security (Biometrics), Learning, like Stephen Hawking said: “We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.”
My research on Cognitive/Neural Interface is evolved in three layers: Mechanisms between Human Affect/Emotion and Bio-information (Brain:fMRI/EEG, Body:ECG/EMG/Eyes-tracking…); Bio-information Pattern Analysis and Features Extraction; Multimodal information Modeling. (Fig.1)
 
 
 
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Fig. 1. Research on Cognitive/Neural Interface
 
The core layer focuses on investigating the connections and meanings between Human Affect/emotion and Bio-information through analyzing the feedbacks from EEG/ECG/EMG, fMRI etc.
 
The middle layer means to develop mathematical algorithms for Bio-signals de-noising, extracting Bio-data features and analyzing individual’s pattern.
 
The edge layer will develop multimodal data modeling and inference methodologies for combination of Bio-data features with other types of context factors, e.g. user profiles and activities, then build standard interface to variable applications.
 

Although there are still some challenges to research in the subject before such a solution can transcend our being, I believe that innovations in the world in the near future will unveil these ingenious emerging technologies and bring them to us.