Feature Story

Why "Young Professorship"?

The growth and development of young scholars is one of the hot spots of common concern in education field. Young scholars charged with the important mission. The development of colleges and technological innovation depends on their contributions. Young scholars are connecting links between the preceding and the following. On the one hand, they gradually expose their talent as the new power in the subject; on the other hand, as the main force in the teaching, they are in charge of cultivating the the next generation of talents. Young scholars have invested a great deal of enthusiasm in the scientific research and personnel training, constantly trying to find new ways and means. Part of them are growing fast as the backbone of scientific research and teaching. At the same time, before they obtain sufficient academic reputation, it is difficult for them to obtain sufficient resources to support the research and teaching innovation. After communication between China's education sector and a number of well-known experts, MSRA carried out "Microsoft Young Professorship" under the Ministry of Education's recognition and support. It is hoped that, through this project, MS and the vast majority of colleagues in the education sector are able to find and support those young scholars who have highly innovative spirit and tremendous potential in computer research and personnel training.

In 2006 Young Professorship, 7 winners were selected. The fact shows us that this award provided great support to these 7 talents in their developments. From Oct 2006 to Oct 2007, they gained great results in academic harvests, personal academic career and academic exchanges.

Academic harvests

In the past year, these 7 young professors published 66 papers in all and gained many patents and award both at home and aboard. Take Zhou Zhihua for example, he is from Nanjing university, main research direction is machine learning. He published 16 papers during the past year and some of them are selected by famous academic magazines such as Vancouver and Hyderabad. He also got 2 China's invention patents and other 3 awards.

Academic career

"Young Professorship" will give winners good opportunity to raise the academic status and make the academic career more successful. Take Zheng Wenming, a winner from Southeast University, for example, he got the doctor degree in 2006. Just several months later, he got doctoral tutor qualification from Southeast University. In June, 2007, he was invited to be professor by Southeast University. When all of these happened, he was just about 30!

Academic exchanges

With this award, these young professors can get more opportunities to exchange with top class experts and attend international conferences. They are quite important for these scholars' growth. Yang Xiaokang, from Shanghai Jiaotong University, published 22 papers in past year, 5 of them were selected by IEEE Transactions. In this year, he invited 15 professors from famous labs aboard to his lab for exchanging, such as UIUC, Florida Institute of Technology, McMaster and so on. He also gained Germany Humboldt Fund and attend many high level academic conferences.

Now, the new young professors of this year are ongoing. We sincerely hope that our efforts become cornerstones on your road to success!