Prof. LI Zexiang Selected as One of the 40 Model Innovators and Entrepreneurs for the 40th Anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone

20/10/2020

Top 40 in 40 Years

Prof. LI Zexiang Selected as One of the 40 Model Innovators and Entrepreneurs for the 40th Anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone

Prof. Li Zexiang is recognized as a model innovator and entrepreneur who made distinguished contribution to the development of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. [Download Photo]

Prof. LI Zexiang, Colin Lam Ko Yin Professor of Engineering and Professor of Electronic and Computer Engineering, was selected as one of the 40 model innovators and entrepreneurs for the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone by the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government.

Prof. Li is the Chairman of the Changsha Intelligent Driving Institute, Googol Technology (Hong Kong) Limited, Songshan Lake Xbot Park, and DJI.

He was among the earliest Mainland China students to study robotics in leading US research universities in 1980s. He received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Economics from Carnegie Mellon University, his MA degree in Mathematics and PhD degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a research scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of MIT and later as an assistant professor in the Robotics and Manufacturing Laboratory of New York University, before joining HKUST in 1992 in its formative days. He is the Director of the HKUST Automation Technology Center, which he set up in 1998.

He has been an appointed member of the Hong Kong government’s Committee on Innovation, Technology and Re-industrialization since 2017. He received “The InnoStars Award” by Our Hong Kong Foundation in 2018. He and his former student Frank Wang, who is CEO & Founder of DJI, are the recipients of the prestigious IEEE Robotics and Automation Award in 2019.

An exemplary academic-entrepreneur, Prof. Li has been committed to bringing lab results to the market and helping students to be entrepreneurs. He hopes to make use of his own entrepreneurship experience to develop a sustainable and systematic model to train innovative talents when they are still students.

The 40 honorees have made distinguished contributions in driving the development of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone over the past 40 years. They are the role models who dare to reform, innovative and explore, making influential impact on technological innovation, management innovation, system innovation, and cultural innovation. They are determined to break new ground, overcome technical difficulties, innovate business models, and lead the development of their fields and industries.