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ZJU to offer two majors in robotics engineering and AI,open Turing Class this year

2019-04-11

New majors will fill educational gap and meet growing workforce needs.

China will launch around 400 programs related to big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics in universities in 2019, China’s Ministry of Education announced recently. From this fall, Zhejiang University will offer two new undergraduate programs in robotics engineering and AI, which will meet a growing workforce need for more robotics engineers and AI scientists both locally and globally. Meanwhile, Turing Class in the Chu Kochen Honors College will open its door to the first cohort of students.

  • The robotics engineering program

“Studying robotics engineering at ZJU will be a distinctive experience in a number of ways. First, the program curriculum is developed to equip students with theoretical and technological knowledge, help them develop logical reasoning and analytical ability, and offer exceptional hands-on skills. Second, strong research capacity of the College will contribute to the learning experience of the students,” said Prof. HOU Dibo, vice dean of the College of Control Science and Engineering. “Another attraction of the Program is that we encourage students to learn and create through active participation in various robotics related contests.” The Program aims to nurture students with global competitiveness in the field of robotics.

  • The AI program

“It is our hope that with the new AI program, we will better meet the needs of our students and our community,” said CHEN Wei, vice dean of the College of Computer Science and Technology. “Through the unique setting of interdisciplinary courses and a good combination of education and research, we are proud that we are now able to provide our students with the opportunity to graduate with a major in this exciting and promising area!”

Students majoring in AI can register for courses in four modules, including intelligence decision and robots, statistical machine learning, smart sensing and language as well as visual interaction and design.

Moreover, the College of Computer Science and Technology will set up a special committee for this new program. In partnership with Zhejiang Laboratory, Microsoft Research Asia and Alibaba DAMO Academy, the committee will be comprised of distinguished domestic and overseas experts.

  • Turing Class

This year, the University will also open Turing Class in the Chu Kochen Honors College. The Class aims at cultivating promising talent in computer science. Students admitted to this Class are eligible to declare their major from three areas — computer science and technology, AI and information security. The Class will be tutored by a very strong faculty team, which includes two CAE fellows and one Turing Award winner. Every student will have one mentor for academic development and one professional supervisor for research.

Meanwhile, ZJU will also invite eminent teachers and researchers from world-class universities to deliver lectures for the Turing Class. A special expert committee has been set up to provide suggestions for this program in various aspects.

It is noteworthy that a multi-dimensional and multi-level international academic exchange platform will be created to provide students with research and internship opportunities in top research institutes all over the world. Through the platform a global faculty team will be introduced to engage in curriculum design, English-only teaching and research training so as to help students adapt to international educational modes and develop a global vision.

“Every student in this class will be subsidized to do research for over three months in a world-famous institution. At present, Zhejiang University has come into contact with distinguished scholars in the world’s leading universities or institutes, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, UC Berkley, the University of Oxford, the National University of Singapore, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu Research,” CHEN Wei said.