Registration

Welcome

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  L. Rafael Reif

  MIT

  President

  Since July 2012, Rafael Reif has served as the 17th President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is leading MIT’s pioneering efforts to help shape the future of higher education. A champion for both fundamental science and MIT’s signature style of interdisciplinary, problem-centered research, he is also pursuing an aggressive agenda to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. A member of the MIT faculty since 1980, Reif has served as director of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories, as associate department head for Electrical Engineering, as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and as provost. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, he is the inventor or co-inventor on 13 patents, has edited or co-edited five books and has supervised 38 doctoral theses. He received the degree of Ingeniero Eléctrico from Universidad de Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela, and his doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
• 

  Chun Li Bai

  Chinese Academy of Sciences

  President

  Prof. BAI Chunli, a chemist and an expert in nanoscience, is President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and Chairman of the Presidium of the Academic Divisions of CAS. He is also President of The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS), the Honorary President of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and the Honorary President of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS). Prof. BAI graduated from the Department of Chemistry, Peking University in 1978 and received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from CAS Institute of Chemistry in 1981 and 1985, respectively. From 1985 to 1987, he worked at California Institute of Technology in US as a visiting scholar. After coming back to China in 1987, he continued his research at CAS Institute of Chemistry. From 1991 to 1992, he worked as a visiting professor at Tohoku University in Japan. In 1996, he was appointed as Vice President of CAS ; in 2004, he was appointed as Executive Vice President of CAS (full ministerial level). Prof. BAI’s research areas include organic molecular crystal structure, EXAFS, molecular nanostructure, and scanning tunneling microscopy. He has been elected member or foreign member of world-known academies of sciences or engineering in approximately 20 countries and territories, including CAS, TWAS, National Academy of Sciences of US, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of UK, the European Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He also serves as the Honorary President of the Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology, the Chief Scientist for the National Steering Committee for Nanoscience and Technology, Vice Chairman of Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, Vice Chairman of the National Committee for Science & Technology Awards, member of the Central Leading Group for Education, and member of the National Leading Group for Science and Technology. Moreover, he is the Editor-in-Chief of National Science Review and Nanoscale.

The U.S. and China on the Frontiers of Science

From the mysteries of the human brain, to the outer edges of the cosmos, researchers in the United States and China are advancing human knowledge in service to the world. In this opening session, we’ll get a report from the frontiers of science and hear from some of the world’s leaders in neuroscience, quantum information, and astrophysics.

• 

  Gang Chen

  MIT

  Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering

  Gang Chen is the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the director of the "Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC Center)" - an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy. He obtained his PhD degree from the Mechanical Engineering Department, UC Berkeley. He was a faculty member at Duke University and UCLA, before joining MIT in 2001. He received an NSF Young Investigator Award, an R&D 100 award, an ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award, a Nukiyama Memorial Award by the Japan Heat Transfer Society, a World Technology Network Award in Energy, an Eringen Medal from the Society of Engineering Science, and the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellences in Mentoring and Advising from MIT. He is a fellow of American Association for Advancement of Science, APS, ASME, and Guggenheim Foundation. He is an academician of Academia Sinica, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• 

  Robert Desimone

  MIT

  Director, McGovern Institute for Brain Research

  Robert Desimone, PhD, is Director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and the Doris and Don Berkey Professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Prior to joining the McGovern Institute in 2004, he was director of the Intramural Research Program at the National Institutes of Mental Health, the largest mental health research center in the world. Desimone is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of numerous awards, including the Troland Prize of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Golden Brain Award of the Minerva Foundation.
• 

  Jian-Wei Pan

  University of Science and Technology of China

  Professor

  Jian-Wei Pan is a physics professor, Executive Vice President at University of Science and Technology. He was born in Dongyang City, Zhejiang Province in March 1970. He graduated from the Department of Modern Physics of the University of Science and Technology of China in 1992. He obtained a master's degree in theoretical physics from the university in 1995 and a doctorate in experimental physics from the University of Vienna in Austria in 1999. In 2011, he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
• 

  Nergis Mavalvala

  MIT

  Professor, Department of Physics

  Nergis Mavalvala is the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Associate Head of the Department of Physics. She is a physicist whose research focuses on the detection of gravitational waves from violent events in the cosmos that warp and ripple the fabric of spacetime. She is a leading figure in the scientific team that in early 2016 announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves from colliding black holes using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors. This breakthrough and subsequent observations have ushered in a new era of astrophysics, opening a window into the violent and warped universe not visible with light. In addition to her work on developing technologies for gravitational wave detectors since her graduate student years in the 1990s, Mavalvala has also conducted pioneering experiments to generate exotic quantum states of light and to optically cool and trap mirrors to enable observation of quantum effects that are usually manifested in the microscopic world in human-scale objects. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010 and election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017. Mavalvala earned a BA in physics and astronomy from Wellesley College and a PhD in physics from MIT.

Coffee Break

The Quest for Intelligence

This session will showcase the exciting vision and goals of the MIT Quest for Intelligence, a multi-disciplinary research project at the intersection of neuroscience and machine learning. We’ll hear directly from key players in this ground-breaking project about how it is dismantling traditional disciplinary barriers in the search for new solutions.

• 

  Lan Yang

  Sun Media Group and Sun Culture Foundation

  Chairperson

  Yang Lan is Chairperson of Sun Media Group, one of the leading private media companies in China, and Sun Future Art Education Foundation a non-profit organization aiming to improve education and promote philanthropy. Her signature show “Yang Lan One on One” is China’s longest-running in-depth talk show. Ms. Lang’s other media projects include Sun TV, Greater China’s first documentary satellite channel and “Her Village”, a multimedia community to empower women. Ms. Yang’s civic and charitable engagements include serving as the first Chinese UNICEF Ambassador, and serving as MC and moderator at high-profile events such as the Beijing Olympic Games and the World Economic Forum. In 2010, she partnered with the Gates Foundation to organize the “Giving Pledge” event in Beijing, a milestone for Chinese philanthropy. Ms. Yang graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University (BA) Columbia University (MA). Her numerous awards include a Global Leadership Award from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a “Makers” award from the Paley Center for Media and AOL. In 2013, Ms. Yang was included in Forbes magazine’s list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.
• 

  W. Eric L. Grimson

  MIT

  Chancellor for Academic Advancement

  W. Eric L. Grimson is Chancellor for Academic Advancement at MIT, Professor of Computer Science, and the Bernard M. Gordon Professor of Medical Engineering. As Chancellor for Academic Advancement, he represents the Institute to alumni/alumnae, parents and others, and advises the President on issues related to MIT’s Campaign for a Better World. A faculty member since 1984, he previously served as Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and as Chancellor for MIT. In addition to research in computer vision and medical image analysis, Professor Grimson teaches introductory Computer Programming courses, including an online MITx course. In all, he has taught some 15,000 MIT undergraduates and served as the thesis supervisor to almost 50 MIT PhDs. A Fellow of AAAI, of ACM, and of IEEE, he holds a Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) from Dalhousie University and a Doctor of Science (honoris causa) from University of Saskatchewan.
• 

  Xiao’ou Tang

  SenseTime

  Founder of SenseTime , Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong

  Xiao’ou Tang is the founder of SenseTime, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company focused on computer vision and deep learning. A recognized leader in AI technologies and an IEEE fellow, Tang is a professor of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Associate Director of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Science. Tang also served as Director of Visual Computing at Microsoft Research Asia from 2005-2008. His research achievements include being the first Chinese Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computer Vision, the Best Paper Award at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) and the work on facial recognition that became the first algorithm to surpass human performance in 2014. He holds degrees from MIT (PhD), the University of Rochester (MS), and the University of Science and Technology of China (BS).
• 

  Dina Katabi

  MIT

  Professor

  Dina Katabi is the Andrew & Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She is also the director of the MIT’s Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award. Katabi received her PhD and MS from MIT in 2003 and 1999, and her Bachelor of Science from Damascus University in 1995. Her research focuses on innovative mobile and wireless technologies with particular application to digital health. Katabi’s research has been recognized by the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, the SIGCOMM test of Time Award, the Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, the NBX Career Development chair, and the NSF CAREER award. Her students received the ACM Best Doctoral Dissertation Award in Computer Science and Engineering twice. Further, her work was recognized by the IEEE William R. Bennett prize, three ACM SIGCOMM Best Paper awards, an NSDI Best Paper award, and a TR10 award. Several start-ups have been spun out of Katabi's lab such as PiCharging and Emerald.
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  Daniela Rus

  MIT

  Director, CSAIL

  Daniela Rus is the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. Rus’ research interests are in robotics, artificial intelligence, and data science. She serves as the Associate Director of MIT’s Quest for Intelligence Core, and as Director of the Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center, whose focus is the advancement of AI research and its applications to intelligent vehicles. She is a member of the Toyota Research Institute advisory board. Rus is a Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of ACM, AAAI and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the recipient of the 2017 Engelberger Robotics Award from the Robotics Industries Association. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.
• 

  Qingfeng Liu

  iFlyTek Co., Ltd.

  Founder, Chairman and CEO

  Dr. Liu Qingfeng is founder, Chairman and CEO of iFLYTEK. He is also Director of the National Speech & Language Information Processing Laboratory; Adjunct Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC); Deputy to the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th National People’s Congress; Founding Director-General of the National Alliance for University Students Innovations & Entrepreneurship; and Director-General for the National Alliance of Speech Industry. Dr. Liu was admitted to USTC in 1990 and had contributed quite a few key technologies and innovations in speech synthesis during school years. In 1999 at the age of 26 when he was still a second year doctorate candidate, he founded iFLYTEK with a dozen of his schoolmates. iFLYTEK went public on Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2008, becoming the very first public company founded by college students in China. For over 19 years, Dr. Liu has stood up for his dream to build an industry to “make machines to listen and speak, to understand and think,” and has led iFLYTEK achieving quite outstanding results in research and productization of core speech and artificial intelligence technologies. Through head-to-head competitions the company has successfully turned around the Chinese speech market which was once dominated by oversea IT giants, and now occupies 80% of the domestic market share. More importantly, Dr. Liu is leading the company making great progress in applying speech and AI technology into many very important aspects of our society, such as communication, education, healthcare, smart city, enterprise and consumer products, etc. He is confident in and committed to making a better world with AI. In recognitions of its exceptional technological innovations and industrial achievements, iFLYTEK was named “2017 CCTV Top 10 Public Company in China.” Dr. Liu was also awarded the 14th Annual “CCTV's China Economic Figure of the Year” in 2013, and “CBN's China Best Business Leader” in 2015.
• 

  Ya-Qin Zhang

  Baidu

  President

  Dr. Ya-Qin Zhang is currently the President of Baidu Inc, a leading global internet company focused on mobile, search, and AI with over 45000 people in 20 countries. Prior to joining Baidu in 2014, Zhang had served on several key positions including Corporate Vice President, Chairman of Microsoft China, and managing director of Microsoft Research Asia during his 16-year tenure with Microsoft. He has made outstanding contributions to the Internet and software industry with more than 60 US patents granted, more than 500 peer-reviewed papers, 11 monographs, and many key products in digital video, networking, operating system, and cloud computing. He is an honorary or guest professor at more than 10 prestigious universities, and advisor to several government agencies. Zhang is a Fellow of Australia Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), and Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Lunch

Global Challenges. Global Solutions.

Addressing the world’s most urgent challenges requires the best minds working together in the search for bold and creative solutions. The universities of the 21st century must be leaders in solving global problems. This session provides a close look at new research in several critical areas, including climate change mitigation, food safety, and the design of sustainable, resilient urban communities. Learn how MIT and China are leading the way to a safer, healthier and more equitable world for all.

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  Marty Schmidt

  MIT

  Provost

  In February 2014 Dr. Martin A. Schmidt was appointed Provost of MIT. Beginning in 2008 he served as Associate Provost, and since January 2012 he also assumed responsibilities for “all things industry” as the senior administrative officer responsible for MIT’s industrial interactions. He has been an MIT faculty member since 1988, and in 2016 was appointed as the Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. From 1999 to 2006 he served as the director of MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories. His teaching and research are in the areas of micro and nanofabrication of sensors, actuators and electronic devices, and MEMS. He is the co-author of more than 80 journal publications and 120 peer-reviewed conference proceedings, an inventor on more than 30 issued U.S. patents and involved with six start-up companies. Schmidt received his BS degree from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1981 and his SM and PhD degrees from MIT in 1983 and 1988 respectively.
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  Maria Zuber

  MIT

  Vice President for Research

  Maria Zuber is the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and Vice President for Research at MIT, where she is responsible for research administration and policy. She is also responsible for intellectual property and research integrity and compliance, as well as research relationships with the federal government. She is the first woman to lead a science department at MIT and the first to lead a NASA planetary mission. In 2013, President Obama appointed her to the National Science Board, and in 2016 she was elected Board Chair, a position she held until 2018. Zuber’s research bridges planetary geophysics and the technology of space‐based laser and radio systems. Since 1990, she has held leadership roles associated with scientific experiments or instrumentation on ten NASA missions, most notably serving as Principal Investigator of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. She holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an Sc.M. and Ph.D. from Brown. She has won numerous awards including the MIT James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor the MIT faculty bestows to one of its own. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and is a fellow for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geological Society and the American Geophysical Union.
• 

  Retsef Levi

  MIT

  Professor of Operations Management

  Retsef Levi is the J. Spencer Standish (1945) Professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, member of the Operations Management Group at MIT Sloan and affiliated faculty at the MIT Operations Research Center. He is the MIT Sloan faculty co-director of the Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) Program, and the faculty co-director of the MIT Sloan Health System Innovation Initiative. Levi's current research is focused on the design of analytical data-driven decision support models and tools addressing complex business and system design decisions under uncertainty in areas such as health and health care management, supply chain, food safety and security, risk, management, procurement and inventory management, revenue management, pricing optimization, and logistics. Levi teaches courses in operations management, analytics, risk management, system thinking, and health care. He received the NSF Faculty Early Career Development award, 2008 INFORMS Optimization Prize for Young Researchers, 2013 Daniel H. Wagner Prize, and the 2016 Harold W. Kuhn Award. Levi earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Tel Aviv University, and a PhD in operations research from Cornell University.
• 

  Siqi Zheng

  MIT

  Director, China Future City Lab

  Siqi Zheng is the Samuel Tak Lee Associate Professor of Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship. Her field of specialization is urban and environmental economics, urban development and real estate market, with a special focus on China. A book she has co-authored, Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China (Princeton University Press) was published in May 2016. She has also published more than 100 papers and two books in Chinese. She is the Associated Editor of Journal of Economic Surveys, and is on the editorial board of Journal of Housing Economics and International Real Estate Review. She is the Vice General Secretary of the Global Chinese Real Estate Congress and on the board of the Asian Real Estate Society. Zheng has completed or been undertaking research projects granted or entrusted by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the National Statistics Bureau of China, among others. She received her Ph.D. in urban development and real estate from Tsinghua University in 2005, and did her post-doc research at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Prior to coming to MIT, she was a professor and the director of Hang Lung Center for Real Estate at Tsinghua University, China.
• 

  Carlo Ratti

  MIT

  Director, Senseable City Lab

  An architect and engineer by training, Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at MIT, where he directs the Senseable City Laboratory, and is a founding partner of the international design and innovation practice Carlo Ratti Associati. A leading voice in the debate on new technologies’ impact on urban life, his work has been exhibited in several venues worldwide, including the Venice Biennale, New York’s MoMA, London’s Science Museum, and Barcelona’s Design Museum. Two of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion and the Copenhagen Wheel – were hailed by Time Magazine as ‘Best Inventions of the Year’. He has been included in Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List: 50 people who will change the world’. He is currently serving as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization, and as special advisor on Urban Innovation to the European Commission.
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  Melissa Nobles

  MIT

  Dean, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

  Melissa Nobles is Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nobles’ research and teaching have focused on the comparative study of racial and ethnic politics, and issues of retrospective justice. Her current research centers on constructing a database of racial killings in the American South, 1930–1954. Working closely as a faculty collaborator and advisory board member of Northeastern Law School's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice law clinic, Nobles has conducted extensive archival research, unearthing understudied and more often, unknown deaths and contributing to legal investigations. Nobles is a graduate of Brown University where she majored in History. She received her MA and PhD in Political Science from Yale University. Nobles has held fellowships at Boston University's Institute for Race and Social Division and Harvard University's Radcliffe Center for Advanced Study. She has served on the editorial boards of Polity, American Political Science Review, and Perspectives on Politics journals. Nobles has also been involved in faculty governance at MIT and beyond, serving as the Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty from 2007–2009 and Vice-President of the American Political Science Association, 2013-14.

Next Generation Leaders: MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35

A discussion with some of China’s leading young scientists and business leaders who are shaping the future through cutting-edge advances in science, healthcare, and technology.

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  Irene Chen

  MIT Technology Review China

  Chief Content Officer

  As Chief Content Officer at MIT Technology Review China, Irene Chen is responsible for content development and operation and content-related services. She has been organizing and hosting summits like EmTech China 2018, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 China 2017 and Innovators Under 35 Reunion. Irene gained over 20 years of experience in technology and industry news domain, and has interviewed numbers of C-level leaders from companies like Google, Cisco, Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm, Huawei, MTK, etc. Her content productions cover semi-conductor, telecommunication technology, the Internet, Cloud technology, AI, blockchain and so forth. And has authored and published several popular books concerning tech and the trends.
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  Xingze Wang

  Coherent AI

  Founder & CEO

  Xingze Wang is Professor at HUST and Founder of Coherent AI. He received SB in Math and SB in Physics from MIT, MASt in Maths from University of Cambridge, MS in EE and MS in MS&E, and PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University, where he was President of ACSSS. He received Gold Medals and Best Theory in APhO and IPhO, First Prize in CAAI’s Auto Car Contest, MIT TR35 China, etc. Coherent AI’s investors include Sequoia China, Baidu Ventures, etc. It was voted top 1 in Optics Valley 3551 International Start-up Competition in 2017, top 10 Most Promising Early AI Start-ups in China in 2017, top 50 Unicorn (to-be) AI Enterprises in 2018, top 50 Most Promising China’s Industrial Innovation Enterprises in 2018, etc.
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  Jun Zhu

  Tsinghua University

  Professor, Department of Computer Science and Technology

  Dr. Jun Zhu is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Technology in Tsinghua University. He was an Adjunct Faculty at the Machine Learning Department in Carnegie Mellon University from 2015 to 2018. Dr. Zhu received his B.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Tsinghua in 2005 and 2009, respectively. Before joining Tsinghua as an Associate Professor in 2011, he did post-doctoral research in CMU. His research interest lies in machine learning and applications in text and image analysis. He has published over 100 papers in the prestigious conferences and journals. He is an associate editor-in-chief for IEEE Trans. on PAMI and regularly served as area chair/senior PC for ICML, NIPS, IJCAI, UAI, AAAI, and AISTATS. He was a local co-chair of ICML 2014. He is a recipient of several awards, including ICME Best Paper Award, IEEE Intelligent Systems "AI's 10 to Watch" Award, MIT TR35 China, NSFC Excellent Young Scholar Award, CCF Young Scientist Award, and CCF first-class Natural Science Award. His work is supported by the National Youth Top-notch Talent Support program.
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  Xu Ying

  Academy of Opto-Electronics, Chinese Academy of Science

  Research Professor, Doctoral Supervisor, Vice-director of the Navigation Technology Research Laboratory

  Prof. Xu is mainly engaged in Beidou satellite navigation system construction and its related work. She developed the systematic algorithm theory and engineering applications of Beidou satellite navigation system and its augmentation systems. She is holding/leading 13 projects, supported by 2nd generation navigation projects of NSTMP, Chinese National Natural Science Foundation, Chinese National Programs for High Technology Research and Development, etc. She published 23 papers indexed by SCI/EI as first author or corresponding author and 1 academic translation, and has 28 invention patents (16 authorized). Prof. Xu was awarded "MIT Technology review innovation Under 35" award in China of MIT Technology review in 2017, the special prize of the 2018 satellite navigation and positioning Technology progress award (ranked first), and the Beijing March 8 red flag medal, etc.
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  Yichen Shen

  Lightelligence Inc.

  Founder & CEO

  Yichen Shen is the founder and CEO of Lightelligence, a company using integrated photonics technology to accelerate machine learning computation. Yichen received his Ph.D. degree in Physics from MIT in 2016, while his research is mainly focused on nanophotonics and artificial intelligence. During his Ph.D., Yichen has published more than 25 peer-reviewed journal papers and has filed 8 US patents, including first authored papers on <Science> , <Nature Photonics> and <ICML>. In 2017, Yichen Shen has received Forbes 30 under 30 Global and Technology Review 35 Innovators under 35 (TR35) China.

Coffee Break

Strength, Insight, Solutions: How Financial Innovation is Changing Our World

From shaping the retirement system for future generations to adding key insights in the fight against cancer, financial innovations are changing the world. In this session, leaders in academia and the innovation economy will map the history of this dynamic field, and provide a glimpse of its exciting future.

• 

  Yasheng Huang

  MIT

  Professor

  Yasheng Huang is Professor of political economy and international management and holds International Program Professorship in Chinese Economy and Business at Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a special-term professorship at School of Management, Fudan University and an honorary professorship at Hunan University. His previous appointments include faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard University. Professor Huang is a member of MIT Entrepreneurship Center, a fellow at the Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University, a fellow at William Davidson Institute at Michigan Business School, and a World Economic Forum Fellow. He has served as a consultant at World Bank and at OECD and is serving on a number of advisory boards of non-profit and for-profit organizations.
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  Robert C. Merton

  MIT Sloan School of Management

  Professor of Finance

  Robert C. Merton is School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at MIT Sloan School of Management and John and Natty McArthur University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He is Resident Scientist at Dimensional Holdings, Inc. He was George Fisher Baker Professor of Business Administration (1988–98) and John and Natty McArthur University Professor (1998–2010) at Harvard Business School. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1970, then served on the finance faculty at the Sloan School until 1988 as J.C. Penney Professor of Management. He rejoined the MIT faculty in 2010. Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new method to determine the value of derivatives. He is past President of the American Finance Association, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Merton’s research includes finance theory, lifecycle and retirement finance, optimal portfolio selection, capital asset pricing, pricing of derivative securities, credit risk, loan guarantees, financial innovation, the dynamics of institutional change, and improving the methods of measuring and managing macro-financial risk.
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  Jessica Tan

  Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China,Ltd.

  Deputy Group CEO, Group COO and CIO

  Jessica Tan is a Deputy CEO of Ping An Group overseeing technology and internet businesses as well as the Group COO, CIO and a standing member of Investment Management Committee of the Group for its 26 subsidiaries across Insurance, Banking, Investment and Technology/Internet Businesses. Prior to joining Ping An, Tan was a partner with McKinsey & Company, working with financial companies and regulatory authorities in 15 countries on strategy, innovation, operations and technology. Throughout her career, Tan has pursued her interests in innovation, growth, SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) development and women’s leadership. She co-led McKinsey’s women’s initiative in Asia, and was appointed as a Top 100 Champion at Singapore Board Agender (a public forum promoting Board membership for female executives). Tan holds a masters and two bachelor degrees from MIT.

New Visions of Education and Research for the Benefit of Humankind

In the 21st century, powerful new ideas are transforming our world and reshaping education and research. In our closing session, leading figures from MIT and Chinese institutions of higher learning will share their visions for the future, and explore how research universities in the U.S. and China will educate the next generation of talented young people.

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  Sanjay Sarma

  MIT

  Vice President for Open Learning

  Sanjay Sarma is the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and the Vice President for Open learning. He co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT and developed many of the key technologies behind the EPC suite of RFID standards now used worldwide. He was also the founder and CTO of OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems (NYSE: CKP) in 2008. He serves on the boards and advisory boards of Hochschild Mining, GS1, EPCglobal and several startup companies including TraceLink, IoTask and Top Flight Technologies. Sarma is co-author of the award-winning book: "The Inversion Factor: How to Thrive in the IoT Economy." Sarma received his Bachelors from the Indian Institute of Technology, his Masters from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He also worked at Schlumberger Oilfield Services in Aberdeen, UK, and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories in Berkeley, California. Sarma has authored over 75 academic papers in Internet of Things, computational geometry, sensing, RFID, automation and CAD, and is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research including the MacVicar Fellowship, the Business Week eBiz Award and Informationweek's Innovators and Influencers Award.
• 

  Joi Ito

  MIT

  Director, MIT Media Lab

  Joi Ito is the director of the MIT Media Lab, Professor of the Practice at MIT and a Visiting Professor of Law from Practice at the Harvard Law School. He is a serial entrepreneur who helped start and run numerous companies including one of the first web companies in Japan, Digital Garage, and the first commercial Internet service provider in Japan, PSINet Japan/IIKK. He has been an early-stage investor in many companies, including Formlabs, Flickr, Kickstarter, littleBits, and Twitter. He is chairman of the board of PureTech Health and serves on several other boards, including The New York Times Company, the MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation. He also serves as a strategic advisor to the Sony Corporation. He is the former chairman and CEO of Creative Commons, and a former board member of ICANN, The Open Source Initiative, and The Mozilla Foundation. Ito has received numerous awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute and the Golden Plate Award from the Academy of Achievement, and he was inducted into the SXSW Interactive Festival Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2017, he received the IRI Medal. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from The New School and Tufts University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• 

  Xiao’ou Tang

  SenseTime

  Founder of SenseTime , Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong

  Xiao’ou Tang is the founder of SenseTime, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company focused on computer vision and deep learning. A recognized leader in AI technologies and an IEEE fellow, Tang is a professor of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Associate Director of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Science. Tang also served as Director of Visual Computing at Microsoft Research Asia from 2005-2008. His research achievements include being the first Chinese Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computer Vision, the Best Paper Award at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) and the work on facial recognition that became the first algorithm to surpass human performance in 2014. He holds degrees from MIT (PhD), the University of Rochester (MS), and the University of Science and Technology of China (BS).
• 

  Bin Yang

  Tsinghua University

  Vice President, Provost, Chairman of Tsinghua University Education Foundation

  Professor Bin YANG is a Professor of Business Administration, Ph.D in Management Science. His expertise in General Management includes Organizational Leadership, Ethics, Non-market Strategy, Higher Education Management and etc. He received his BS in Management Information Systems and MS/Ph.D in Management Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University with titles of “Outstanding Graduate”. He has been teaching at Tsinghua School of Economic and Management after graduation and won many awards such as “Outstanding Young Faculty Award” and “Best Teaching Award”. He is Vice-Chairman of Association of Chinese Graduate Education, Vice-Chairman of China National Engineering Education Supervisory Committee, and Sectary-General of China National MBA Education Supervisory Committee.

Closing

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  Richard K. Lester

  MIT

  Associate Provost

  Richard K. Lester is Associate Provost at MIT, where he oversees the international activities of the Institute, and the Japan Steel Industry Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering. In addition, he is the founder and chair of the MIT Industrial Performance Center. Lester’s research focuses on innovation policy and management. He is the author or co-author of eight books on innovation management and policy, productivity, energy technology, and nuclear policy. His most recent book (written with David Hart) is “Unlocking Energy Innovation: How America Can Build a Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Energy System.” Educated at Imperial College (BS) and MIT (PhD), Lester is an advisor to governments, corporations, foundations and non-profit groups, and currently serves as chair of the National Academies’ Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy.

Drinks Reception