2018 ACM Turing Award Laureate
Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the French Académie des Sciences
Fellow of the AAAI, AAAS, ACM and IEEE
VP and Chief AI Scientist at Meta
Silver Professor at New York University
Yann LeCun is VP and Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute and the Center for Data Science. He was the founding Director of Facebook AI Research and of the NYU Center for Data Science.
LeCun received an EE Diploma from ESIEE (Paris) in 1983, a PhD in Computer Science from Sorbonne Université (Paris) in 1987. After a postdoc at the University of Toronto, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories. He became head of the Image Processing Research Department at AT&T Labs-Research in 1996, and joined NYU in 2003 after a short tenure at the NEC Research Institute. In late 2013, LeCun became Director of AI Research at Facebook, while remaining on the NYU Faculty part-time. He was visiting professor at Collège de France in 2016.
LeCun’s research interests include machine learning and artificial intelligence, with applications to computer vision, natural language understanding, robotics, and computational neuroscience. He is best known for his work in deep learning and the invention of the convolutional network method which is widely used for image, video and speech recognition. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the French Académie des Sciences, a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, a fellow of AAAI and AAAS, the recipient of the 2022 Princess of Asturias Award, the 2014 IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award, the 2015 IEEE Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Distinguished Researcher Award, the 2016 Lovie Award for Lifetime Achievement, the University of Pennsylvania Pender Award, and honorary doctorates from IPN, Mexico, EPFL, and Université Côte d’Azur. He is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Turing Award (with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio) for "conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing".
Member of the US National Academy of Engineering
Fellow of IEEE and ACM
Council Chairman of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Harry Shum is a renowned computer scientist and science and technology leader. He was the Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence and Research Group, responsible for driving the company’s overall AI strategy and forward-looking research and development efforts spanning infrastructure, services, apps and agents. He oversaw AI-focused product groups including Bing. He also led Microsoft Research, one of the world’s premier computer science research organizations, and its integration with the engineering teams across the company.
Shum has been widely recognized for his pioneering research in the computer science field. He is Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 2017, he was elected a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to computer vision and computer graphics, and leadership in industrial research and product development. In 2018, he was elected an International Fellow of the Royal Academy Society of Engineering in the United Kingdom. Shum currently serves as the Council Chairman of HKUST.
Fellow of AAAI, ACL, IEEE and ISCA
Chair Professor and Director of the Centre for AI Research (CAiRE) at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Pascale Fung is a Chair Professor at the Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST), and a visiting professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She is an elected Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), an elected Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and an elected Fellow of the International Speech Communication Association. She is the Director of HKUST Centre for AI Research (CAiRE). She is on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Signal Processing Society and a member of the IEEE Working Group to develop an IEEE standard - Recommended Practice for Organizational Governance of Artificial Intelligence.
Her specific areas of research are using statistical modelling and deep learning for natural language processing, spoken language systems, emotion and sentiment recognition, and other areas of AI. She served as Editor and Associate Editor for Computer Speech and Language, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, Transactions for ACL, IEEE Signal Processing Letters.
Fung received her PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University in 1997. She worked and studied at AT&T Bell Labs (1993~1997), BBN Systems & Technologies (1992), LIMSI, CNRS, France (1991), Department of Information Science, Kyoto University, Japan (1989~1991), and at Ecole Centrale Paris, France (1988). She speaks seven European and Asian languages.
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society
Fellow of AAAI, ACL and ACM
Henry and Gertrude Rothschild Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University
Kathleen R. McKeown is the Henry and Gertrude Rothschild Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University and the Founding Director of the Data Science Institute, serving as Director from 2012 to 2017. In earlier years, she served as Department Chair (1998-2003) and as Vice Dean for Research for the School of Engineering and Applied Science (2010-2012). A leading scholar and researcher in the field of natural language processing, McKeown focuses her research on the use of data for societal problems; her interests include text summarization, question answering, natural language generation, social media analysis and multilingual applications. She has received numerous honors and awards, including 2023 IEEE Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award, American Philosophical Society Elected member, American Academy of Arts and Science elected member, American Association of Artificial Intelligence Fellow, a Founding Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics and an Association for Computing Machinery Fellow. Early on she received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, and a National Science Foundation Faculty Award for Women. In 2010, she won both the Columbia Great Teacher Award—an honor bestowed by the students—and the Anita Borg Woman of Vision Award for Innovation.
Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering
Fellow of IEEE and ACM
Director of Pengcheng Laboratory
Boya Chair Professor at Peking University
Gao Wen is a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering, ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow. He is the founding director of Pengcheng Laboratory (Shenzhen, China). He is also a Boya Chair Professor and the director at the Faculty of Information and Engineering Sciences, Peking University. He is currently a deputy to the 14th National People's Congress. He used to be a member of the 10th, 11th and 12th CPPCC National Committee, the vice president of National Natural Science Foundation of China, the chairman of China Computer Federation and the chief editor of Chinese Journal of Computers.
Gao earned seven State Awards in Science and Technology Achievements as the first accomplisher. He received the National May 1 Labor Medal (2023), the Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress of Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (2022), the Outstanding Contribution Award of Guangdong Province (2021), the CCF Wang Xuan Award and the title of “2005 China’s Top Ten Educational Talents”.
Gao has engaged in the research of artificial intelligence, multimedia, computer vision, pattern recognition, image processing, and virtual reality. He published six books and over 300 papers in international journals in the above areas.
IEEE Fellow
Chief Scientist, China Mobile and General Manager, AI and Smart Operation Center, China Mobile Institute
Feng Junlan currently serves as Chief Scientist of China Mobile. She also holds esteemed positions as the Vice Chairman of the China Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance and Board Chair of the Linux Foundation Network (2020-2023).
Dr. Feng received her Ph.D. in Speech Recognition from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. After her graduation, she joined AT&T Labs Research where she served as a principal researcher until 2013. Feng then moved to China Mobile Research, taking the helm of the AI R&D center - Jiutian. Since then, she has spearheaded multiple breakthroughs, with over 130 technical research papers, more than 100 patents, and 20+ AI algorithm competition awards. Additionally, she has managed 16 national-level research projects.
Under Feng's leadership, her team has initiated and led 86% of international standards on network intelligence. The products and AI models developed by Jiutian have been incorporated into over 3700 production services, generating an annual commercial value of 3.9 billion Chinese Yuan.
Feng's contributions extend to the academic community as well. She is a regular reviewer and program committee member for major AI conferences and journals. Her dedication to her field has led to her election to various committees, including the IEEE Speech and Natural Language Processing Committee and IEEE Industry Committee.
Fellow of IEEE, ACM and ACL
Head of Research of ByteDance
Hang Li is the Head of Research at ByteDance Technology, a multinational internet technology company headquartered in Beijing. His professional journey encompasses notable stints at NEC Research, Microsoft Research Asia, and Huawei Noah's Ark Lab before his current tenure at ByteDance.
Li's expertise spans a broad spectrum of research areas, including natural language processing, information retrieval, machine learning, and data mining. He is the author of five books and has over 150 technical papers to his name, published in renowned journals and conferences, covering his areas of specialization. Li's outstanding contributions to the field have earned him esteemed recognition. He holds the distinction of being an ACM Fellow, an ACL Fellow, and an IEEE Fellow. Furthermore, he has devoted significant effort to serving his field, participating in program committees for leading conferences such as ACM SIGIR and ACM WSDM. He has also lent his expertise to the editorial boards of various international journals.
Li graduated from Kyoto University and received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo.
IEEE Fellow
Chief Technology Officer at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence
Jingren Zhou currently holds the positions of Chief Technology Officer at Alibaba Cloud, where he plays a pivotal role in driving technology innovation and product development. His responsibilities also include leading the development of AI foundational models and their applications in various business scenarios at Alibaba Cloud. Before taking on this role, he made significant contributions by leading the development of advanced techniques for personalized search, product recommendation, and advertising at Alibaba's e-commerce platform and Alipay's online payment platform. Prior to his time at Alibaba, he was a veteran at Microsoft, where he led Big Data and AI research and development. His research interests span across cloud computing, databases, and large-scale machine learning systems. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Science and Technology of China, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University. He is a Fellow of IEEE.
Member of Academia Europaea
Fellow of ACM, IEEE, CCF and HKAES
Dean of Graduate School and Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Dr. Cao is the Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science and the Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing in the Department of Computing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is the Dean of Graduate School, director of Research Institute for AIoT, and director of University’s Research Facility in Big Data Analytics.
Dr. Cao’s research interests include parallel and distributed computing, wireless networking and mobile computing, big data and AI. He published 6 co-authored and 9 co-edited books, and over 500 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings. He also obtained 13 patents. Dr. Cao received many awards and recognitions for his outstanding research achievements. He is a member of Academia Europaea, a fellow of HK Academy of Engineering Sciences, a fellow of IEEE, a fellow of CCF and a distinguished member of ACM.
Executive Director
Center for AI and Robotics in Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Dr Hongbin Liu is a Professor at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Automation (CASIA), Executive Director for the Centre of AI and Robotics (CAIR), Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr Liu is also an adjunct Reader and director of the Haptic Mechatronics and Medical Robotics (HaMMeR) lab at the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King's College London (KCL), UK.
Dr Liu's group has been focusing on research and development of surgical robotic systems with embodied AI intelligence, particularly advancing haptic perception and interaction capabilities of the system, to enable safer and more effective minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment through narrow spaces. Dr Liu's research has led to the clinical translation of a series of flexible robotic systems for neurosurgery, respiratory interventions, as well as GI surgeries. Dr Liu published more than 120 papers in the top journals and conferences of international robotics, with an H index of 39. He is inventor for over 50 patent applications, with accumulated research funding over 100 million HKD.
Fellow of the International Society of Learning Sciences and Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education
Research Chair Professor of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Education University of Hong Kong
Prof. Looi obtained his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research focuses on learning sciences, computer-supported collaborative learning, mobile learning, AI in education, and computational thinking. He has had published more than 120 papers in international journal papers, as well as over 50 books or chapters, and produced 160 refereed international conference papers. Professor Looi has given more than 90 keynote speeches, and plenary and invited talks at international conferences and institutions. His research has had a high level of influence on educational practices. His work on rapid collaborative learning was cited in the 2010 US National Educational Technology Plan as a key example of technology-enabled innovation of significant impact.
Prof. Looi is a Fellow of the International Society of Learning Sciences, and a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education. During his stint at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Professor Looi was the founding head of the Learning Sciences Lab, the first research centre devoted to the study of the sciences of learning in the Asia-Pacific region. He served as the President of the Global Chinese Society for Computers in Education from 2017 to 2019.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University
Dr. MA Jing is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Bapist University (HKBU). Before that, she obtained her PhD from the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (SEEM), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in early 2020. During her PhD, she was a visiting scholar at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore from Dec 2018 to Aug 2019. She was a visiting scholar at Institute for Basic Science (IBS), South Korea from Dec 2019 to Feb 2020. In earlier years, she gained experience in software industry, e.g., Tencent AI Lab, Baidu NLP, etc. Her research interest centers on Natural Language Processing, Social Network and encyclopedia Analysis, Fact Verification and rumor detection, E-commerce Question Answering, and text Mining. She has published technical papers in these areas in various international journals and conferences and books. In recent years, she served as Program Committee Members of many international conferences, including ACL, EMNLP, CIKM, AAAI, WWW, etc, and was frequently invited to review for journals such as TIST, TKDE, TOMM, etc.
Fellow of IEEE and ISCA
Patrick Huen Wing Ming Chair Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Helen Meng is Patrick Huen Wing Ming Chair Professor of Systems Engineering & Engineering Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has previously served as the first female chairperson of the SEEM department, as well as Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Engineering. She established the Microsoft-CUHK Joint Research Centre for Human-centric, Computing and Interface Technologies in 2004, which received the national status of an MoE Key Laboratory in 2008. Helen is Principal Investigator of the first HKSARG RGC Theme-based Research Scheme awarded in the field of AI. In 2020, she helped establish the CUHK-led InnoHK on AI, leading the Centre for Perceptual and Interactive Intelligence as Director. In 2023, she began supporting the HKUST-led InnoCentre, the Hong Kong Generative AI Centre, as Deputy Director. Helen is Co-PI and Curriculum Development Leader of the CUHK-JC AI4Future Project and led the development of the first pre-tertiary AI curriculum which has been mainstreamed by the HKSARG Education Bureau, and will be taught in local secondary schools across Hong Kong starting in 2024. Helen has been a plenary or keynote speaker of conferences including INTERSPEECH, IEEE ICASSP, ACL, COLING etc.
Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors
Fellow of IFAC, AIChE and IEEE
Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science and President, Lingnan University
Prof. S. Joe Qin is currently the President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science of Lingnan University in Hong Kong. In his prior career, he worked as the Chair Professor, Dean of the School of Data Science, and Director of Hong Kong Institute for Data Science at City University of Hong Kong, the Fluor Professor at the Viterbi School of Engineering of the University of Southern California, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Principal Engineer at Emerson Process Management.
Prof. Qin is a Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), AIChE, and IEEE. He is the recipient of the 2022 CAST Computing in Chemical Engineering Award by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the 2022 IEEE CSS Transition to Practice Award, the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the 2011 Northrop Grumman Best Teaching award at Viterbi School of Engineering, and the IFAC Best Paper Prize for a model predictive control paper published in Control Engineering Practice.
Prof. Qin has published over 470 international journal papers, book chapters, conference papers etc. He is the inventor of 12 U.S. patents. He received over 38,000 Google Scholar citations with an h-index of 86.
Professor of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong
Wong Hau San is currently a professor at the Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong. He received the BSc and MPhil degrees in Electronic Engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the PhD degree in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of Sydney. His research interests include artificial intelligence (in particular deep learning and its applications to domain adaptation and generative modeling), computer vision and health informatics. His research works have appeared in major conferences related to AI and computer vision including CVPR, ICCV, AAAI, IJCAI and ACM Multimedia. He is currently serving as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, and he is also the co-author of a book (now in its 2nd edition) on the application of computational intelligence techniques to image processing.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong
Yu Tao is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at The University of Hong Kong and serves as Director of the XLANG Lab (as part of the HKU NLP Group). His main research interest is in Natural Language Processing He completed his Ph.D. at Yale University and was a postdoctoral fellow in the UW NLP group at the University of Washington. His research aims to build language model agents that transform (“grounding”) language instructions into code or actions executable in real-world environments, including databases, web applications, and the physical world etc,. It lies at the heart of the next generation of natural language interfaces that can interact with and learn from these real-world environments to facilitate human interaction with data analysis, web applications, and robotic instruction through conversation. This involves executable language grounding, such as semantic parsing and code generation, efficient and generalizable large language models, and interactive systems. Tao is the recipient of the Google Research Scholar Award and the Amazon Research Award.
Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and European Academy of Sciences
Fellow of IEEE, BCS, CAAI and HKAES
Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Provost, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Prof. Yike Guo is the Provost of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He is a world-renowned computer scientist who has led several large-scale AI and data science research projects in Hong Kong, UK and other European countries. He was the Vice-President (Research and Development) of Hong Kong Baptist University and the founding Director of the Institute of Data Science at Imperial College London's six global institutes. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (MAE), a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences (FHKEng), a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (FIEEE), a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS), and a Fellow of the Chinese Institute for Engineering Intelligence (FCAAI).
Professor Guo Yike won the 2022 Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology Award for Outstanding Contribution Award, which is considered to be the highest honor in the field of intelligent science and technology in China.