Institute of Cyberspace Technology | Academic Staff

Dr CAO YinFeng

Ph.D. (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) 
Lecturer

Member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
IEEE Next Generation Networks and Internet Technical Committee (NGNI-TC) Operations Committee 

Teaching Area: Internet of Things (IoT)
Biography

Dr Yinfeng CAO is a Lecturer at the Institute of Cyberspace Technology, HKCT Institute of Higher Education. Prior to joining HKCT, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Assistant at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). He also gained valuable international teaching experience as an Instructor for the STELLA Programme at Kanazawa University in Japan.

His research focuses on the intersection of edge computing, blockchain technologies, and decentralised systems. Specifically, his work explores decentralised identity systems for Web3 and DePIN, trustless digital twin generation, the metaverse, and security and privacy in federated learning. Dr Cao’s research excellence has been widely recognised; he received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Annual Congress on Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) in 2025 and at the Blockchain and Trustworthy Systems Conference (BlockSys) in 2021. Furthermore, he earned Best Paper Award Nominations at IEEE iMETA in 2023 and 2024, and was the Best Presentation Runner-Up at the PolyU Research Student Conference (PRSC) in 2025.

Actively engaged in the global academic community, Dr Cao serves on the Programme Committees for prominent international conferences, including the ACM Web Conference, IEEE AIMS, and IEEE iMETA. He is also a dedicated reviewer for leading journals such as IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, and the IEEE Internet of Things Journal. Beyond his academic service, he frequently shares his expertise, having served as a keynote speaker at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, reviewing panel of CMIRI, Hong Kong.

Research Areas

AIoT, Cybersecurity, Web3, Blockchain

Selected Publications
Journal Articles

Liu, H., Cao, J., Cao, Y., Bai, D., Liang, J., & Li, R. (2025). EdenDID: an edge computing and blockchain-based decentralized identity system for Web3 applications and DePIN. Cluster Computing, 28(16), 1048.

Cao, Y., Cao, J., Du, B., Bai, D., Zhang, M., & Li, R. (2025). ChainTwin: Blockchain-based Trustless Digital Twin Generation and Cross-Domain Adoption. IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering.

Cao, Y., Cao, J., Du, B., & Li, R. (2025). Decentralized Digital Twin Networks. IEEE Communications Magazine.

Cao, Y., Cao, J., Wang, Y., Wang, K., & Liu, X. (2022). Security in edge blockchains: Attacks and countermeasures. ZTE COMMUNICATIONS, 20(4).

Conference Papers

Li, Y., Cao, J., Ruan, P., Saxena, D., Zhu, S., & Cao, Y. (2025). Geometry-consistent 4D Gaussian splatting for sparse-input dynamic view synthesis. In Proceedings of the IEEE Annual Congress on Artificial Intelligence of Things (IEEE AIoT 2025).

Wang, K., Cao, J., Yang, Y., Li, X., & Cao, Y. (2025). FedCCA: Client-centric adaptation against data heterogeneity in federated learning on IoT devices. In Proceedings of the IEEE Annual Congress on Artificial Intelligence of Things (IEEE AIoT 2025).

Liang, J., Cao, J., Yang, B., Bai, D., Liu, H., & Cao, Y. (2025). Decentralized physical infrastructure networks: Backgrounds, architectures, open issues, and case studies. In Proceedings of the IEEE Blockchain 2025.

Liu, H., Cao, J., Yang, B., Bai, D., Cao, Y., Shen, X., Zhang, Y., Liang, J., Jiang, S., & Zhang, M. (2025). PolyLink: A blockchain based decentralized edge AI platform for LLM inference. In Proceedings of the IEEE Blockchain 2025.

Cao, Y., Cao, J., Bai, D., Wen, L., Liu, Y., & Li, R. (2025, April). Map the blockchain world: A trustless and scalable blockchain interoperability protocol for cross-chain applications. In Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2025 (pp. 717-726).

Takakubo, T., Cao, Y., Li, R., & Cao, J. (2025, August). UnionChain: Graph-based Shard Partitioning for Scalable Smart Contract Execution. In 2025 International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking and Applications (MetaCom) (pp. 405-412). IEEE.

Bai, D., Cao, J., Cao, Y., Wen, L., & Stojmenovic, M. (2024). Ormer: A Manipulation-resistant and Gas-efficient Blockchain Pricing Oracle for DeFi. arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.07893. 

Cao, Y., Cao, J., Cui, Z., Bai, D., Zhang, M., & Wen, L. (2024, August). Polytwin: Edge blockchain-empowered trustworthy digital twin network for metaverse. In 2024 IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking, and Applications (MetaCom) (pp. 81-88). IEEE.

Cao, Y., Cao, J., Liu, H., Cui, Z., & Wen, L. (2024, November). Eden: An edge computing empowered proof-of-personhood protocol for anti-sybil in blockchain-based metaverse. In 2024 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Metaverse Technologies & Applications (iMETA) (pp. 182-189). IEEE.

Cao, Y., Cao, J., Bai, D., Hu, Z., Wang, K., & Zhang, M. (2023, September). Polyverse: An edge computing-empowered metaverse with physical-to-virtual projection. In 2023 International Conference on Intelligent Metaverse Technologies & Applications (iMETA) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

Honours and Awards

Best Paper Award, lEEE Annual Congress on Artificial Intelligence of Things (IEEE AIoT 2025) (2025)

Best Presentation Runner-Up, PolyU Research Student Conference (PRSC) (2025)

Best Paper Award Nomination, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Metaverse Technologies and Applications (iMETA2024) (2024)

Best Paper Award Nomination, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Metaverse Technologies and Applications (iMETA2023) (2023)

Best Paper Award, Blockchain and Trustworthy Systems: Third International Conference (BlockSys 2021) (2021)