Former Microsoft AI Head Harry Shum Returns to Academia, Takes New Position With Tsinghua University

Ever since Microsoft Executive Vice President of AI and Research Harry Shum announced last November that he would leave the company in early 2020, there has been speculation about just where the 53 year old AI pioneer might head next. Today, Shum (沈向洋 / Shen Xiangyang) will speak at China’s Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he will formally assume a Dual-Professorship (双聘教授) position with the prestigious school’s Institute for Advanced Study.

Shum will co-lead the computer vision and computer graphics PhD program at Tsinghua, according to the Institute for Advanced Study’s admissions page.

Shum will give a talk on Engineering Responsible AI at Tsinghua’s Beijing campus on March 5 at 09:00 local time (01:00 UTC / 17:00 PST March 4). A livestream of the speech will available on Tsinghua Univerisity’s Weibo page. At the event, Tsinghua University President Qiu Yong will formally offer a letter of appointment to Professor Shum, who was previously an adjunct professor with the school.

A November Synced report on Shum leaving Microsoft looks back on his many achievements in 23 years with the company. Shum started his Microsoft journey at Microsoft Research in 1996. He was the corporate vice president responsible for the Bing program from 2007 to 2013, and in 2016 Microsoft appointed him to lead its new Artificial Intelligence and Research Group. Going forward, Shum will stay connected with Microsoft Research in the role of Visiting Researcher.

Shum is very active in academic research, having published over 200 papers at international conferences and in journals. He is also an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow and an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow with an academic focus mainly on computer vision and computer graphics. In 2017, Shum was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the United States.

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Author: Yuqing Li | Editor: Michael Sarazen