Industry Forum
Date: 30 August 2024 (Fri)
Time: 10:15 - 11:45 am
Venue: Grand Ballroom, 2/F, New World Millennium Hong Kong Hotel
Topic: AI for Sustainability
Panelists
- Dr Xiaodong He, Vice President, JD.com
- Ir Harry Lai, BBS, Executive Director, Hong Kong Green Building Council
- Dr Yongping Zhai, Senior Advisor in Strategy Development, Tencent
Biography of Panelists
Dr Xiaodong He, Vice President, JD.com
Dr He Xiaodong is a world-class AI scientist, who has received a bachelor degree from Tsinghua University, a MS degree from Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a PhD degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Before joining JD. com, Dr He Xiaodong served as the Principal Researcher and Research Manager of the DLTC at Microsoft Research, Redmond in the US. He has published more than 200 theses related to artificial intelligence areas including natural language processing and multi-modal intelligence on language and vision, which have been cited over 50,000 times by Google Scholar, with his top 10 theses cited over 15,000 times. He has also won a slew of awards such as ACL Outstanding Paper Award and IEEE SPS Young Author Best Paper Award. He once served as the Chair of IEEE Seattle Section, and held an editorial position at several top journals. In 2021, he was included in the AI 2000 World Most Influential Scholar List, which was released by Tsinghua University-Chinese Academy of Engineering Knowledge Intelligence Joint Research Center. He was selected in three areas, including natural language processing, speech recognition, information retrieval and recommendation, making him one of the only 60 scientists across the world who were included in the list. After joining JD.com in 2018, Dr He Xiaodong has set up a series of intelligent man-machine interaction technology laboratories in Beijing, Chengdu and Silicon Valley, as well as an Intelligent Customer Service Product Department to promote the industrialization of technology. With his team, he has developed the first large-scale commercially applied emotional intelligent customer service system, which has served more than 500 million users as JD Retail’s core system, and achieved many bench-marking cases and successful practices.
Ir Harry Lai, BBS, Executive Director, Hong Kong Green Building Council
Ir Harry LAI, BBS, is the Executive Director of the Hong Kong Green Building Council. He was the Principal Advisor of the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD) from 2019 to 2023. Prior to his retirement from the civil services in 2019, Ir LAI was the Deputy Director/Regulatory Services of EMSD responsible for overseeing the enforcement of regulatory functions and implementation of various initiatives on electrical, mechanical, gas and railway safety as well as energy efficiency and conservation. Ir LAI had represented Hong Kong, China (HKC) to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Energy Working Group (EWG) meetings.
Ir LAI received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Master of Science degree in Environmental Management, both from the University of Hong Kong. He is a chartered engineer, a fellow member of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE) and also the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), UK. He had served as Chairman of the HKIE Nuclear Division, Secretary of the HKIE Electrical Disciplinary Advisory Panel, and also Member of the HKIE Fellowship Committee. Ir LAI is the Adjunct Professor of the School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong and the Adjunct Professor of the Research Institute for Smart Energy, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Dr Yongping Zhai, Senior Advisor in Strategy Development, Tencent
Dr Yongping Zhai graduated from Department of Thermal Engineering of Tsinghua University in 1983. Subsequently he studied in Institute of Energy Policy and Economics Grenoble, France, and received PhD in Energy Economics in 1989.
From 1990-1993, Dr Zhai was Assistant Professor in the Energy Technology Division, Asian Institute of Technology. From 1993 to 2000, he served as a Senior Energy Economist in the African Development Bank. He joined Asian Development Bank in September 2000 and served as Chief of Energy Sector Group at ADB, in charge of energy policy formulation and promotion of low-carbon technologies in Asian developing countries.
In July 2021, he joined Tencent as Senior Advisor in Strategy Development Department, supporting the company’s carbon neutrality operations and renewable energy development.