Is one of America’s top AI-robot scholars about to join China’s tech talent pool?

China looks set to claim another coup in its mission to build AI talent, with one of the world’s top scholars in artificial intelligence for robots listed among PhD supervisors at a Shanghai university.

Su Hao, who holds two doctorates – one in mathematics and one in computer science – has appeared on Fudan University’s faculty list as a professor in electronic information specialising in AI. The list, published on March 31, names 322 PhD supervisors appointed this year.

Previously, Su was a tenured associate professor at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and the founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Hillbot, an AI robotics company.

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Inside a Beijing lab, humanoid robots are put to the test

On Google Scholar, his papers on embodied AI are among the most cited globally, with more than 145,000 citations. There has been speculation since October that he was poised to return to China but Fudan’s list is the first confirmation.

According to an interview he gave last year, AI has intrigued him from a young age.

“My earliest interest in AI began in junior middle school, when I came across minimum spanning tree algorithms. That was the first time I felt that human intelligence might not be so unique, or rather, something that machines can reproduce,” he told a tech podcast.

In 2002, Su entered Beihang University in Beijing to study mathematics. In 2005, during an internship at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), he had his first real encounter with AI.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, he continued at Beihang to gain a doctorate in applied mathematics.

South China Morning Post