Tencent Youtu Lab, a machine learning-focused artificial intelligence lab operated by Tencent Holdings Ltd., has added Jia Jiaya (pictured), a professor and computer vision scientist at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, to join its team.
Jia will be responsible for artificial intelligence research including machine vision, image processing, pattern recognition, machine learning and artificial intelligence applications.
Two month ago, Tencent’s Youtu Lab set a record by achieving an 83.29% recognition rate in the MegaFace challenge, an internationally recognized image recognition contest known for its high level of difficulty.
"Professor Jia is an expert in artificial intelligence, and we are happy to have Jia join our Youtu lab," said Liang Zhu, vice president at Tencent. "Youtu has a leading position in image recognition and face recognition. In recent years, Tencent has made significant progress in artificial intelligence including big data and cloud computing based on our social networking platform. We will enhance our AI technology and expand AI applications to improve daily life."
Before joining Youtu, Jia is a professor specialized in computer vision and machine learning at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, with a focus on image and video understanding, computational imaging, motion and depth estimation, practical optimization, and advanced learning for visual content.
His projects were funded by a number of tech companies including Microsoft, Qualcomm, Adobe Systems Inc, NVidia Co, Amazon.com, Lenovo Group Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Chinese AI firm SenseTime.
Before CUHK, Jia worked as a visiting scholar at Adobe and an adjunct researcher at Microsoft. He holds a Ph.D. degree in computer vision from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Youtu Lab’s image processing, pattern recognition and data mining technology have been applied in a number of Tencent products, including its social media platform Qzone, QQ Music, social app WeChat, and Karaoke mobile app WeSing.
Tencent hired Yu Dong, a speech recognition expert and former principal scientist formerly at Microsoft Research, as its vice general manager of its new AI lab in Seattle last month.
