Building the talent pipeline: the HKUST joint lab story

Published February 13, 2015

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The following is the second of three blogs on the contributions of the Microsoft Research Asia Joint Lab Program (JLP), which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. The JLP brings together the resources of Microsoft Research and major Chinese universities, facilitating collaboration on state-of-the-art research, academic exchange, and talent incubation. This blog focuses on the Microsoft-Hong Kong University of Science and Technology joint lab.

Professor Ni, at 2014 Asia Faculty Summit in Beijing Collaboration between the computer science department of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Microsoft Research Asia extends back more than decade, predating, in fact, the establishment of their joint lab. Professor Lionel Ni still remembers coming to Beijing to meet with colleagues at Microsoft Research when he joined HKUST in 2002. “Even then,” he recalls, “Microsoft Research Asia was making lot of contributions to our work, not only research-wise but also by nurturing new talent.”

It was only natural then, that HKUST would be interested in a new joint lab program when it was proposed by Microsoft Research Asia and the Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE) in 2004. “When we heard about this idea, we were tremendously excited. We thought HKUST must become one of the first members of this joint lab program,” says Professor Ni.

He and his colleagues submitted a proposal that differed from those of other applicants, in that it offered collaboration across a broad front of IT domains. “Other joint labs—like the ones with Harbin or Tsinghua—focus their research in a special area. But our joint lab is different; we don’t operate in one particular area. We actually have different domains working together, such as graphic visualization and data mining,” notes Professor Ni. “People say, ‘Wow, IT is so broad; you’re covering so many things.’ That’s what we want to do—and what we proposed from the onset. And clearly Microsoft Research and MoE liked the idea: we were one of the first five labs accepted into the program, and the only one in Hong Kong.”

“This joint lab really helps us a lot,” continues Professor Ni. “It enables our faculty members to collaborate even more closely with Microsoft Asia researchers, and it provides great opportunities for our PhD students.” Those student opportunities derive largely from the joint PhD supervision program, which provides young PhD students with long-term internships at Microsoft Research Asia, where they conduct projects together with Microsoft researchers. “I believe we were the first lab to propose joint PhD supervision,” says Professor Ni, clearly pleased with the program’s achievements.

At the time of the joint PhD program’s establishment, many talented young computer scientists with master’s degrees were working for Microsoft Research Asia. Despite their admirable contributions, the career growth of these young researchers was likely to be limited without a PhD. Under the joint PhD supervision programs, students selected by Microsoft Research Asia join HKUST’s doctoral program. During their first year, they live in Hong Kong, meeting their course requirements at HKUST. The next year, they return to Microsoft Research Asia to pursue their research further. HKUST and Microsoft Research Asia jointly oversee the program, assigning each student a supervising professor from HKUST and a supervising researcher from Microsoft Research Asia.

Talented HKUST students also enter the program upon recommendation by the university; selected second-year PhD students travel to Microsoft Research in Beijing to work on projects. Both the university and Microsoft Research are pleased with the synergistic results of the program, viewing it as a success that equally benefits both of the organizations and the students.

Professor Ni at the joint PhD supervision agreement signing ceremony in 2005

Over the past several years, Microsoft Research Asia has hosted 15 HKUST interns through this program—and hired seven graduates as full-time employees. Now they are working in a variety of research areas, from computer vision and graphics to visualization and data mining to search and multimedia. Yichen, who graduated from HKUST in 2006, is now a lead researcher at Microsoft Research Asia where he heads the computer vision group. “I was one of the HKUST graduates who joined Microsoft Research Asia in the early years. Thanks to the Joint Lab platform, in my second year as a PhD student, I participated an important Microsoft Research Asia project and published my first SIGGraph paper, which inspired and enlightened my research career. I feel very lucky to have had that opportunity, when many other students at a similar age are not sure about how to do good research and where to obtain industrial experiences,” Yichen says.

Another successful participant in the program, Weiwei Cui, now a researcher in the visualization group, recalls, “When my professor learned that Microsoft Research Asia recruited a top researcher in visualization in 2010, he sent me to the lab right away for an internship. There was not much research in this area in Hong Kong or China at that time. Since then, we started our deep collaboration that has continued for nearly five years. My professor kept sending his best students to Microsoft Research Asia.”

The joint lab has witnessed many such successes in the past years and we are confident that it will continue to foster outstanding talent development and research advancement in the coming years.

—Tim Pan, Director of University Relations, Microsoft Research Asia

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