Peking University, Apr. 6, 2014: Dr. Hong Xiaowen, managing director of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) and guest professor of PKU, visited Peking University (PKU) and delivered an academic speech on April 2.

On the afternoon, Hong Xiaowen reported the fifteen years’ cooperation between MSRA with PKU, especially the interaction with the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), in aspects of teaching, research and career planning.

He also thought highly of the “liberal arts” education in PKU, and hoped to make more contributions to the society with PKU in the field of science research.

PKU President Wang Enge expressed gratitude to MSRA’s support in talents cultivation and research developing for PKU, and looked forward to the further cooperation.

On the evening, Hong Xiaowen gave a report titled Datafication of the world: people, community and physical space in Yingjie Exchange Center.

“We are now in a world surrounded by a large amount of data information”, said Hong. Big data help us deepen our understanding to the world surrounding us, and get better control of the world. For example, we can use big data to observe people (face identification, hair design and action tracking), as well as to observe communities (social net data), and even to analyze the whole physical space urban computing and three-dimensional printing).

Hong Xiaowen also shared personal ideas with the audience on topic of his academic experience.

Written by: Xiao Yunman

Edited by: Zhao Xiaowei

Source: http://pkunews.pku.edu.cn/xwzh/2014-04/04/content_282126.htm