HyperAI超神经

Contents at a glance:2023 IJCAI YES is scheduled to be held at East China Normal University in Shanghai from July 4 to 6. On the eve of this conference featuring young scholars in the field of AI, HyperAI had the honor of interviewing Huang Hong, an associate professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. The following is a summary of this interview. I hope this article can show readers a true portrait of young AI scholars today.

Keywords:2023 IJCAI YES AI Young Scholar

This article was first published on HyperAI WeChat public platform~

Last year, Baidu Talent Intelligence (TIC) and other institutions jointly released a list of young Chinese AI scholars. Through a big data study of AI talents over the past decade, the list found that with the continuous advancement of academic directions, the age structure of talents is becoming younger.This situation shows that young AI scholars are playing an increasingly important role in the research and advancement of current academic fields.

2023 IJCAI YES will be held at East China Normal University in Shanghai from July 4 to 6, 2023. The protagonists of this high-end academic conference are precisely these young AI scholars who shoulder hopes and burdens. The conference is expected to gather more than 600 participants, including 62 young academic leaders and 54 first authors and collaborators at home and abroad who have passed IJCAI-ECAI-2022 and IJCAI-2021 papers to share the latest scientific research progress. HyperAI was fortunate to participate in the entire conference as a co-organizer, and had the opportunity to have an in-depth chat with Professor Huang Hong, an associate professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology who will attend the meeting. In this relaxed and pleasant conversation,Huang Hong showed everyone the face of contemporary young AI scholars. Thanks to her unique female perspective, this group portrait became more detailed and three-dimensional.

It is graduation week, and master's and doctoral students are busy defending their dissertations, while undergraduates are also preparing for graduation projects. During this period, the pace of students has obviously accelerated, and teachers have also started to jog. In addition to scientific research and regular teaching tasks, Huang Hong's most important task in the near future is to patch up students and provide guidance on their dissertation defense and graduation projects."My work priorities are different every day. Sometimes I do my own research, but recently I have been spending most of my time solving problems for different students."

From Student to Teacher: Determination

Huang Hong was born in an ordinary working-class family in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province. She has been a good student since she was young. From junior high school to high school, she has always been in the key classes of the school. This is a place where outstanding people gather, and Huang Hong is no exception. She mentioned that she was good at both liberal arts and science in high school, but she especially loved science because 「I think science and engineering are very cool and can solve many practical problems."It is a bit regrettable that Huang Hong did not perform at his normal level in the college entrance examination, but it is precisely these experiences that prove that as long as a person has determined the direction in his heart, he will reach the finish line sooner or later.

Although he thought his college entrance examination results were not ideal, Huang Hong's tone was full of pride when he talked about his undergraduate alma mater, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, referred to as NPU, is located in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Its predecessor was the wartime Postal Administration Cadre Training Class founded in 1942 in the Shandong Anti-Japanese Base Area. Therefore, today's NPU's trump card department is the School of Communication and Information Engineering, which is also the department where Huang Hong was admitted.

Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, source network

Huang Hong's undergraduate major is called Radio and Television Engineering. When asked about the reason for her choice, she smiled and said that her thoughts were simple at the time. "With television being so popular, it will be easy to find a job in the future." "The name of this major is very confusing. Many students in the class think that this major is similar to broadcasting and hosting." She went on to say that at the beginning, many students in the class did not really realize what kind of major this was and what kind of jobs they would be looking for in the future. But on the contrary,Huang Hong had a clear understanding of his profession very early on."There are many overlapping courses between the broadcasting and television engineering major and the communications engineering major, which falls under the telecommunications category of engineering majors."

As the school's flagship major, professional experts and teachers in the field of communication engineering often come to the school to teach knowledge. Huang Hong, who has a great interest in this field, will go to listen to professors' lectures after completing her courses. In the process, she gained a lot of insights and consolidated her knowledge unknowingly. "I learned my undergraduate major very well," Huang Hong commented on herself. While in school, she received multiple scholarships. Although it seems insignificant now, at the time, such achievements gave Huang Hong great confidence and she was determined to continue her postgraduate studies.And he was determined to get admitted to Tsinghua University, which was the top-ranked university in China for communications majors at that time.

Talking about her journey to prepare for the postgraduate entrance examination, Huang Hong said frankly that she was very courageous at the time. There are two main reasons for saying this. First, with her excellent performance in the undergraduate stage, Huang Hong had already obtained the only quota for the major that year to be recommended for admission to the graduate school of the school. Second, Huang Hong also interviewed several large companies with the encouragement of her undergraduate teachers, and received offers from several excellent companies such as China Telecom, but she stubbornly chose to give up for her Tsinghua dream. This kind of courage seems to have great risks now, and it made everyone dumbfounded at the time. According to her recollection, the teacher even called her parents specifically, trying to persuade her family to leave a way out for herself. But perhaps due to self-confidence, or perhaps because of the fearlessness of a newborn calf, Huang Hong firmly chose to move towards Tsinghua University, and it only took her about half a year to prepare for the exam.He was successfully admitted to the graduate school of Information and Communication Engineering at the Department of Electronics at Tsinghua University.

After entering Tsinghua University, Huang Hong realized that her efforts were not in vain. What she saw and heard here further broadened her horizons and became an important turning point in her life."Vision determines how far a person can go."As the top university in China, Tsinghua University is full of talents and its academic atmosphere is undoubtedly excellent. In such an environment, Huang Hong met many excellent classmates and teachers who gave her great help and influence.The person who impressed her most was Professor Xiuming Shan, an old professor in the laboratory, who helped her revise her paper 28 times during one thesis tutoring session."I still remember this number," Huang Hong recalled. She admitted that every revision was very painful at the time, but seeing that the old professor sacrificed holidays and insisted on helping her polish and revise, she also calmed down and patiently revised it over and over again until it was perfect. This incident made her realize the older generation of scientific research and education workers' pursuit of details and strong sense of professional belief and responsibility, which has a profound impact on her current teaching methods.

Talking about his decision to study abroad, Huang Hong admitted that he did not make a special decision or consider it.Everything seems to be more natural.In her dormitory, there were two senior students from the computer department, both of whom chose to study abroad for further studies. This environment had a certain impact on her choice. Of course, there was another opportunity that made her firm in her idea - watching Lou Tiancheng's graduation defense. Lou Tiancheng, a Tsinghua alumnus, is known as the programming wizard Lou Jiaozhu. He studied under Academician Yao Qizhi and mainly conducted research on social networks and machine learning related issues. Huang Hong introduced that Lou Jiaozhu's graduation defense was crowded at the time, and many bigwigs went to listen. "As small people, we also went to listen. We were shocked at the time and were very interested in his research." Until one coincidence,She met her senior's tutor, Mr. Fu Xiaoming, who was studying in Germany.After she expressed this idea to him, the tutor encouraged her to conduct relevant research and hoped that she could join him. After graduating from graduate school, Huang Hong set off for Germany, a country known for its rigorous and strong academic atmosphere.He received his Ph.D. with the highest honor "Summa Cum Laude" from the University of Göttingen and continued his studies as a postdoctoral fellow.

After completing her studies, she chose to return to China, continue to stay in academia, and began her teaching career at the School of Computer Science and Technology of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

Library of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, source: Huazhong University official website

From "Young Pepper" to Professor: Confidence

Huang Hong has now been promoted to associate professor, but he started out as a "green teacher".She also has many different feelings about the profession of young university teachers.The term "green pepper" is explained by Baidu Encyclopedia as: an abbreviation for young teachers in colleges and universities, usually referring to people who are new to the workplace, under the age of 35, and have junior or mid-level professional titles.

There has always been a lot of social attention paid to this group.Among them, the most popular one is the "996 for college teachers: the performance dilemma of young teachers》.The author of the article introduced the current situation of this group in a relatively heavy tone - they are under tremendous professional pressure and face fierce competition, which is closely related to the "promotion or leave" system mentioned in the article.

So is this really the case? In this interview, we also asked Huang Hong this question. She said that in the traditional impression, including her own, it was believed that university teachers were a relatively easy and stable profession, but when she really became one of them, she found that the situation was different from what she imagined. For example, most people think that university teachers have winter and summer vacations, but Huang Hong said that for her, the upcoming summer vacation is actually only a few days for her to really rest, and the vacation is actually busier than usual. "These two holidays usually don't have specific teaching tasks, which is suitable for settling down and doing research."She and her colleagues often take advantage of holidays to travel together, attend conferences and study, or discuss research projects.

Therefore, Huang Hong feels that part of the description in the article is indeed true, and this group of people respected by the society as highly educated people are also under a lot of pressure. However, despite this, she remains relaxed and optimistic. On the one hand, the overall atmosphere and environment of Huazhong University of Science and Technology are very good, and the school is relatively tolerant of teachers, so it will not strictly implement overly harsh systems. On the other hand, she believes that she has a good grasp of the work rhythm, and can complete the relevant indicators and performance with quality and quantity, and she is also calm and composed when facing assessments. However, in the face of pressure at work, Huang Hong also believes that this is not an isolated case, but the current situation in society.When pressure falls on individuals, they must learn to relieve negative emotions as soon as possible, find ways to improve themselves and seek a turnaround.

With this mindset, Huang Hong has always had a clear plan for his career. In addition to completing regular teaching and scientific research tasks, he also constantly seizes opportunities to improve himself. In 2018, she was successfully selected into the Microsoft Research Asia "Star Program".The program aims to discover and support a new generation of young scholars, making them academic leaders with outstanding scientific research and innovation capabilities and at the forefront of world science and technology. Although she did not study that year due to too many school affairs, she did so the following year.She joined Microsoft Research Asia with her research on graph representation and graph neural networks.

The reason why I chose this topic is thatIt mainly maintains the continuity of his doctoral research directions of social network analysis and social network mining.According to her, in the early days, this field mainly applied feature-driven network mining methods; then, with the popularity of graph embedding technology and deep learning, it was gradually widely used in social network analysis and social network mining. In this case, Huang Hong also took the opportunity to start research on related topics.

The three months at Microsoft Research Asia were also a rare experience for Huang Hong.There is not only a strong academic atmosphere here,On the one hand, I can concentrate on completing my research work. On the other hand,I can also meet many like-minded researchers.Everyone helped each other, exchanged ideas, and the atmosphere was lively. Until now, Huang Hong still maintains close contact with Microsoft Research Asia, and often discusses specific research issues online.

It is understood thatHuang Hong's laboratory team has recently begun to focus on the hot track of AI for Science.We are trying to solve some hot issues in cross-fields. For example, the team is starting to work with hospitals to conduct relevant big data analysis. I believe there will be new breakthroughs in the near future.HyperAI will continue to pay attention to the experimental results of Huang Hong's experimental team, and AI practitioners who are interested in this direction can also continue to pay attention.

A leader with multiple identities

The day of the interview was the first birthday of Huang Hong's child. The hardship of being a mother a year ago was replaced by the joy of witnessing the growth of her child. When talking about this, Huang Hong's originally gentle tone added a bit of happiness.She admitted that she was very grateful to her family for being a strong support behind her.Taking on the responsibility of taking good care of the child has freed her from too many worries, allowing her to devote more energy and time to teaching and scientific research. But she also talked about how having a child would inevitably take away some of her energy, so she is also trying to find a balance between work and family.

In his spare time, Huang Hong would choose to spend some time with his children and family, strolling around East Lake and walking on the streets. The warm and rare parent-child time can always make people temporarily forget a lot of pressure and worries."My colleagues often joke that raising children is like training a very large neural network."Huang Hong talked with a smile.

Huang Hong's life seems to be going smoothly. Apart from talking about her unsatisfactory college entrance examination results, she defines each stage of her life with one word: naturally.However, every step that seems reasonable requires personal effort and cognition.Especially her experience of studying at Tsinghua University made her realize the importance of vision and perspective to human development.

so,Now she often encourages students to take a long-term view.Only by having the courage to communicate and cooperate with students and teachers from different schools and different environments, and broadening the road, can we find a life path that suits us as soon as possible. Huang Hong is practicing this.For example, the original intention of attending the 2023 IJCIA YES is to witness more cutting-edge achievements in the field of AI through this stage that gathers young AI academic leaders from home and abroad.It may not only inspire your own achievements, but also allow you to meet like-minded people and make progress together. "I regret not participating in the 2021 conference, but I am also looking forward to this one," Huang Hong said.

Huang Hong's kind and warm voice makes people think that these "leaders" who are forging ahead in the tide of technology are actually ordinary people when they take off their halos. They are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives... Of course, they will also face pressure and even difficulties from many aspects, and will try to find ways to make themselves consistent with these challenges.But their life experiences often show that only those who are strong enough in heart can go further and more smoothly.

The guest interviewed in this article, Huang Hong, will attend the 2023 IJCAI YES held at East China Normal University in Shanghai from July 4 to 6. IJCAI YES stands for IJCAI Young Elite Symposium. The first 2021 IJCAI YES was held in Shanghai in 2021, and the 2023 IJCAI YES is the second. The conference aims to cultivate the next generation of artificial intelligence researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs by providing a platform for young people to showcase their cutting-edge work, learn from industry experts, and collaborate with like-minded peers. At the same time, it aims to strengthen international exchanges in the academic field and promote the popularization and development of artificial intelligence throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
For a complete list of guests and agenda for the 3-day conference, please visit: https://ijcai.org.cn/

Guest Introduction

Huang Hong

Associate Professor, Doctoral Supervisor, and Master Supervisor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Received a master's degree from Tsinghua University in 2012, and graduated with the highest honor "Summa Cum Laude" from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 2016 with a doctorate. His main research directions are data mining, social network analysis, and big data applications. In recent years, he has published many papers as the first/corresponding author in top international academic journals such as KDD, TKDE, TKDD, WWW, IJCAI, WSDM, etc. He presided over 1 National Natural Science Foundation Youth Fund, 1 General Fund, and 1 Hubei Provincial Fund. He served as a member of the conference program committee of many world-class conferences. He was selected for the 2018 Microsoft Research Star Young Scholar Visiting Program and won the 2021 ACM Hubei (Wuhan) Rising Star Award.