Prof. CHEN Qifeng, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering as well as Electronic and Computer Engineering, has been inducted into the annual list of “35 Innovators under 35” (China region) in 2018 by MIT Technology Review, a magazine owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Established in 1999, the original “35 Innovators under 35” list recognizes outstanding innovators younger than 35 from around the world every year, in fields such as biotechnology, energy, transportation, communications, and the Internet.

With a view to recognizing the rise of Chinese technology talents, the magazine launched the annual award with its Chinese partners specifically for the country in 2017, celebrating young Chinese people who could revolutionize our lifestyles and shape the future of technology and industry.

For the second edition of the award in 2018, 35 innovators are selected from five different categories: “entrepreneurs”, “humanitarians”, “pioneers”, “visionaries” and “inventors”, encompassing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, topological quantum, aeronautics and astronautics.

At the age of 29, Prof. Chen is named one of the seven “visionaries” this time for achieving breakthroughs in aspects such as image decomposition and synthesis as well as optical flow algorithm, after his years of study in the realm of computer vision.

In recent years, Prof. Chen’s focus has been on the utilization of AI to synthesize images and videos. His groundbreaking use of Cascaded Refinement Network (CRN) based on multiple modules with escalating resolution is capable of creating images that can rival real photos.

He is also a co-founder of Lino, a Silicon Valley-based startup with a mission to create a “decentralized autonomous video content community” by cultivating an even more open and transparent setting for content creation.

Thanks to Prof. Chen’s research, the idea of making films solely using computer vision technology will soon become a reality.