Department of Food Science and Nutrition
Project Associate / Project Assistant (two posts)
(Ref. 260921011)
[Appointment period: each for four months initially, with possibility of further appointment]
Duties
The appointees will assist the project leader in the project - “AI-empowered academia-industry-community training framework for older adult nutrition assessment and age-friendly food development”. They will be required to:
(a) develop a mobile-responsive web application for older adult dietary-survey and food preference data collection, including user authentication, questionnaire forms, encrypted API implementation and secure database management;
(b) build a backend web platform with role-based access control for students and teachers, supporting the upload of reference knowledge bases, reference guidelines and documents for teachers, as well as students’ submission of nutritional care plans;
(c) implement an AI-tutoring module using RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) with commercial LLM APIs, to provide formative feedback on students' dietary-assessment work based on teacher-uploaded materials with source tracing;
(d) implement system logging and record‑keeping functions to support project outcome evaluation;
(e) deploy and maintain the system on cloud server;
(f) provide technical support for system piloting, deployment within PolyU and collaborating with community partners;
(g) produce complete technical documentation (deployment guide, database schema, AI prompt configuration and hand-over manual) for project continuity; and
(h) perform any other duties as assigned by the project leader or his/her delegates.
Qualifications
Applicants for the Project Associate post(s) should have a master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, AI or a related discipline or an equivalent qualification with three or more years of relevant work experience.
Applicants for the Project Assistant post(s) should have a bachelor’s degree in one of the afore-mentioned fields or a related discipline or an equivalent qualification with relevant work experience.
For both posts, applicants should also have:
(a) practical full‑stack web‑development experience covering frontend, backend and relational databases;
(b) hands‑on experience in building RAG/document‑QA applications via LLM APIs and prompt engineering;
(c) strong interpersonal, coordination and communication skills to collaborate with non‑technical academic and community stakeholders; and
(d) strong awareness of data‑privacy and information‑security obligations for human‑participant research data, and be able to produce well‑structured technical documentation.
Preference will be given to those with experience in web-based platform/system development, encrypted API implementation and cloud server deployment.
Applicants are invited to contact Dr Sandy Geng at telephone number 3400 8729 or via email at ping.geng@polyu.edu.hk for further information.
Conditions of Service
A highly competitive remuneration package will be offered.
Consideration of applications will commence on 28 September 2026 until the positions are filled.
Posting date: 21 September 2026