Source: School of Information Science and Technology, School of Software

Written by: Wu Guobin

Translated by: Jiang Jun

Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On May 7, a 9-member academic delegation from Microsoft Research Asia, including Dr. Jonathan Tien, Director of Engineering; Dr. Zhang Yongguang, Principal Researcher; Dr. Wu Feng, Senior Researcher; Dr. Lin Chin-Yew, Senior Researcher; and Dr. Wu Guobin, University Relations Program Manager, visited SYSU as part of their spring semester campus tour. The visit was designed to strengthen cooperation between SYSU and the world-class enterprise, to enable students to get to know the research of world-class products as soon as possible and to cultivate talents of higher level. Professor Lai Jianhuang, Dean of School of Information Science and Technology, and Professor Chao Hongyang, Deputy Dean of School of Software, received the delegation.

The delegation visited School of Information Science and Technology and School of Software in succession and conducted in-depth communication with the leaders of the two schools. Both sides agreed to continue strengthening cooperation in talent cultivation and to promote collaborations in research projects. Dr. Jonathan Tien, Director of Engineering at Microsoft Research Asia, shared his experience in technology transformation, displayed the whole process of transforming academic achievements of Microsoft Research Asia into Microsoft products by the Innovation Engineering Group, and had a technical discussion with teachers from School of Information Science and Technology and School of Software.

The researchers from Microsoft Research Asia had a round table talk with the students of SYSU ACM Team and the students who had been listed in the national top 100 in the Beauty of Programming 2013. In the talk, the researchers made a detailed introduction to their research fields, answered questions raised by the students, and encouraged the students to keep detecting and solving problems and maintain curiosity in their academic pursuit.

The delegation held a discussion with teachers in related research fields from School of Information Science and Technology and School of Software, covering topics such as wireless network, multimedia, knowledge mining, machine learning, Internet economy and computational advertising. Dr. Lin Chin-Yew, Dr. Wang Taifeng and Dr. Liu Ning from Microsoft Research Asia respectively gave a lecture on “Project Soul: Toward Social Big Data Analytics for Information Discovery and Recommendation”, "A brief introduction to Internet Economy and Computational Advertising Research in MSRA”, and “Behavioral Targeting”.

During the visit, the delegation also selected students for the SYSU-Microsoft Research Asia joint doctoral program for the cultivation of innovative talents. The researchers got a comprehensive view of the candidates’ knowledge and ability through one-to-one interview. The selected students will have one-year visiting study in Microsoft Research Asia starting from their fourth year of undergraduate study. In their postgraduate study, supervisors from both sides will provide the students with a tailored cultivation plan and integrate the advantageous resources of the two sides to improve the cultivation level of research talents.