Scientist from Nanjing University takes up top role at international AI organisation
- Zhou Zhihua has been elected as the latest president of the Board of Trustees at the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence
- IJCAI is a non-profit organisation focused on scientific and educational activities relating to AI
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) professor Zhou Zhihua has been tapped to head up one of the world’s top AI academic associations, becoming the first person teaching at a mainland Chinese institution to take the helm since its founding more than 50 years ago in California.
Zhou is currently head of the department of computer science and technology as well as dean of the AI school at Nanjing University in China’s eastern Jiangsu province. He was elected as the programme chair of the IJCAI in 2021 and served as a trustee of the association between 2018 and 2023, according to his biography on the IJCAI’s official website.
Zhou’s appointment was made at the closing ceremony of this year’s IJCAI conference in Macau. Although professor Yang Qiang, head of the department of computer science and engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, headed the IJCAI from 2017 to 2019 – he was a permanent Hong Kong resident despite being born in mainland China.
Zhou did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his new role.
Founded in 1969 in California, IJCAI is a non-profit organisation focused on scientific and educational activities relating to AI. The IJCAI conference, held annually since 2016, attracts large numbers of AI researchers and professionals from around the world, according to its official website.
At this year’s conference, where big AI models were a hot topic, Zhou said discussions had focused on developing the capabilities of AI models as well as overcoming potential drawbacks, according to an interview he did with tech website Leiphone.com.