Tsinghua and Baidu Join Hands to Nurture Top-notch Innovative Talents
Tsinghua-Baidu Top Innovative Talent Program kicked off on December 16, 2011. Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) Dean and Turing Award laureate Professor Andrew Chih-Chi Yao and Baidu CEO Robin Li both addressed the inauguration ceremony. IIIS Deputy Dean Professor Amy Yuexuan Wang and Baidu Senior Scientist Dr. Haifeng Wang introduced the program, under which the cleverest students will solve the most valuable problems on Internet.
Prof. Andrew Yao, Robin Li, Prof. Amy Wang, Dr. Haifeng Wang and CC Yao Professor Luming Duan, and Tsinghua University News Center Vice Director Shijie Yu unveiled the golden key together and inaugurated the program.
The collaboration between IIIS and the national leading enterprise Baidu aims to create a model for nurturing top-notch talents. Baidu will set up scholarships for IIIS students who are encouraged to solve key research problems in four categories.
In 2005, Professor Yao founded the Tsinghua Xuetang Special Pilot CS Class (Yao Class) with a view to nurture promising undergraduate students in the field of computer science. Yao Class has since set up a model for cultivating innovative talents in accordance with their aptitude and developed an extensive international teaching program. Its distinctive talent cultivation model has been highly acknowledged and strongly supported.
In her remarks, Professor Amy Wang introduced that up until now, Yao Class students have published 45 papers during undergraduate studies. Among them, ten have presented talks at top academic conferences and 96% pursue further studies upon graduation and are now making remarkable achievements in the field of computer science. The SOSP 2011 paper by Dong Zhou has been the first accepted paper from mainland. Tiancheng Lou has won dozens of gold medals and ranked first in ACM Programming Contests, which has been reported by New York Times and others. In the International Academic Review on Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University in August 2010, the Committee Chair, Turing Award laureate Professor John Hopcroft has remarked Yao Class program as the best program with top undergraduates.
Professor Yao said that the success of Baidu has demonstrated that top-notch innovative talents are essential to an enterprise. And its advantage in innovation meets the demand for more talents in China’s rapid development
