The 1st Forum on Frontiers of Science and Engineering

Everything towards AI

Seattle, WA, USA, May 28 - 30, 2018

General Chair

S. Joe Qin, U. Southern California


Technical Program Chairs

Chengshan Xiao, Lehigh U.

Dejing Dou, U. Oregon


Local Arrangement Chairs

Yinhai Wang, U. Washington

Qiang Wan, GIX Tsinghua


Finance Chair

Jiangyu Li, U. Washington


Publicity Chairs

Yiran Chen, Duke University

Tao Hong, UNC Charlotte


Registration Chairs

Jeff Ban, U. Washington

Jane Wang, U. British Columbia


Organizing Committee

Yong Bai, Marquette U.

Xinyu Cao, U. Minnesota

Shi Chen, U. Washington

Yunhao Liu, Michigan State U. 

Zhenqiang Ma, U. of Wisconsin

Lin Tian, UC Merced

Albert Wang, UC Riverside

Yu Wang, UNC Charlotte

Min Wu, U. Maryland

Tian Zheng, Columbia U.  

Hao Zhu, UT Austin 


Advisory Committee

Feng Deng, Northern Light

Shengfa Hu, Anyka Co., Ltd. 

Shishan Ji, RI Tsinghua-Shenzhen 

Harry Shum, Microsoft 

The 1st Forum on Frontiers of Science and Engineering (FFSE-2018) will be held in Seattle, WA, USA, on May 28-30, 2018. FFSE is a forum for researchers in academia and industry to be exposed to breakthroughs, innovations, and new trends in the broad areas of science and engineering that are changing the human society. FFSE offers an informal setting for dynamic interactions and exchanges on the frontiers of science and engineering research. FFSE promotes multidisciplinary collaboration in research and education in all aspects of science and engineering, including socio-economic impacts. 

The Forum is an annual convention organized by the Tsinghua Alumni Academic Club (TAAC). The theme of the FFSE-2018 focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) and everything in science and engineering that may benefit from AI. FFSE features 6 keynote presentations, 4 invited talks, a career development panel, and a 1-hour research collaboration mixing.

Program Book (download PDF)

Keynote presentations (abstracts and speaker bios):
  • "A Builder’s Take on AI," Eric Xing, Carnegie Mellon University & Petuum 
  • "AI and Security: lessons, challenges and future directions" Dawn Song, University of California, Berkeley
  • "Information Theoretic Interpretation of Deep Neural Networks" Lizhong Zheng, MIT
  • "Architecture Innovations in the AI Era" Yuan Xie, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • "Speech and Language to AI Evolution" Xuedong Huang, Microsoft AI and Research
  • "Low-dimensional Structures and Deep Models for High-dimensional Data" Yi Ma, University of California, Berkeley
Featured talks (abstracts and speaker bios):
  • "Natural Language Processing Research & Development in Alibaba" Luo Si, Alibaba
  • "Selected Topics in Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis" Jane Wang, University of British Columbia
  • "The Challenges of Running Neural Networks on Edge and Mobile Devices" Yiran Chen, Duke University.
  • "Statistical Thinking for AI: Keeping Human in the Loop" Tian Zheng, Columbia University
Career development panel: 
1) How to perform outstanding research under current international and national political environment; 2) How to write winning proposals and establish viable multidisciplinary research collaborations; 3) How to prepare for taking administrative roles. 
  • Chengshan Xiao (Moderator), Lehigh University 
  • Jiangyu Li, University of Washington
  • Yi Ma, UC Berkeley
  • Zhenqiang Ma, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Zhi Tian, George Mason University
  • Yinhai Wang, University of Washington
  • Min Wu, University of Maryland
  • Jean Zu, Stevens Institute of Technology

Technical Program Summary:
  • May 28, Monday Evening Reception – get to know each other
  • May 29, Tuesday – two technical sessions in the morning and two technical sessions in the afternoon with keynotes and tutorials
  • May 29, Tuesday Evening – Banquet and TAAC Inaugural Meeting
  • May 30, Wednesday - two technical sessions of keynotes and tutorials in the morning and a panel session in the afternoon.

Registration Fees (REGISTRATION OPEN):
  • Regular (w/ banquet): $350/person May 7 or earlier; $450/person after May 7.
  • Student and post docs (w/o banquet): $150/person May 7 or earlier; $200/person after May 7.
  • Banquet on May 29: $100/person.

Hotel: Hilton Bellevue, 300 112th Ave SE, Bellevue, WA 98004. The Monday evening reception and Tuesday evening banquet will be hosted at Hilton Bellevue. Hilton Bellevue provides a block of rooms at a lower rate ($109/night) for our conference. To take advantage of this rate, please reserve your room as soon as possible and no later than April 28, 2018 using THIS LINK. You can also call (425) 450-4102 and mention "TAAC Conference" to make room reservations using our conference rate. Our conference rate is kept available until all the reserved rooms are booked or the April 28, 2018 deadline is passed.

Venue: GIX Campus, 12280 NE District Way, Bellevue, WA 98005. The FFSE-2018 will be held at the GIX campus, a global partnership between major research universities and innovative corporations to develop leaders in innovation. The first two academic partners are Tsinghua University and the University of Washington, with early support from Microsoft. Seattle is a trendy, artistic and tech-savvy city in North America with countless activities within the city and around. The Forum attendees can visit the Experience Music Project museum, watch flying fish at the Pike Place Market, take a ride to the top of the Space Needle, or sip coffee at the original Starbucks Shop.