In a homecoming for Hong Kong\u2019s artificial intelligence community, Cao Liangliang \u2013 former principal engineer and director at Google DeepMind, IEEE Fellow and architect of foundational AI systems at Google, Apple and IBM \u2013 has returned to the city after a two-decade absence.<\/p>\n
His appointment as Chair Professor of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) last week completes an intellectual boomerang trajectory that began under renowned mentor Tang Xiao\u2019ou<\/a> at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003.<\/p>\n From Cao\u2019s early work at Tang\u2019s pioneering Multimedia Laboratory, from which the AI company SenseTime emerged, to leading roles shaping Silicon Valley\u2019s most advanced AI \u2013 including Gemini, Apple Intelligence and Vision Pro \u2013 he has built global influence in machine learning that could energise Hong Kong\u2019s academic ecosystem.<\/p>\n Space computing: what is it, why move computing into orbit and where does China stand?<\/p>\n \u201cReturning to Hong Kong is a full-circle moment for me,\u201d Cao announced on his personal website.<\/p>\n Born in Donggang, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, Cao was admitted to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), a leading Chinese science and technology institution, in 1998. When he graduated in 2003, he met Tang Xiao\u2019ou, who had come to USTC to recruit students.<\/p>\n Tang, a PhD graduate of MIT, returned to Hong Kong to teach in the Department of Information Engineering at CUHK in 1998. Before his death in 2023, Tang recruited outstanding USTC graduates to join MMLab, many of whom have since become prominent figures in China\u2019s AI industry.<\/p>\n Cao received his master\u2019s degree from MMLab in 2005 and worked there as a research assistant until 2006, when he moved to the United States to pursue his PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) under the supervision of Thomas S. Huang. Huang, who died in 2020, was known as the \u201cfather of Chinese computer vision\u201d.<\/p>\n