The Research and Postgraduate Centre congratulates three undergraduate students from the School of Computing and Data Science (SCDS) at Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM) received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Computing (ICOCO) 2026.

The award-winning research was conducted by Software Engineering students Huang Yuxuan, Liu Fengxun and Gao Sajian under the supervision of Dr. Burra Venkata Durga Kumar.

Titled “VaxHERO: A Risk-Aware Distributed Cloud-Edge-End Orchestration Framework for Cold-Chain IoT Systems”, the paper presents a task scheduling framework designed to improve real-time risk monitoring during vaccine transportation.

Conventional cloud-based monitoring systems may experience network delays, while edge devices have limited capacity to process multiple tasks simultaneously. To address these challenges, the team developed VaxHERO, which uses deep reinforcement learning to allocate computing tasks according to network conditions, device workloads and potential risks.

The students received the Best Paper Award at ICOCO 2026

Organised by the IEEE Computer Society Malaysia Chapter, ICOCO 2026 was held from 12 to 14 October 2026 at the Westin Langkawi Resort & Spa in Langkawi. The conference brought together researchers, industry practitioners, educators and students to present research and exchange ideas in computing, information technology and informatics. 

The award-winning students with their supervisor, Dr Burra Venkata Durga Kumar