Symposium on Interdisciplinary Information Sciences 2016 (SIIS 2016) took place at the Lecture Hall of FIT Building, Tsinghua University, on Dec. 18, 2016. As invited guests, Prof. Yong Qiu, President of Tsinghua University and Prof. Jihong Zhang, Deputy Director of Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, attended the opening ceremony and made opening remarks. 9 renowned academics from China, the USA and Germany attended and celebrated the opening ceremony, together with over 100 teachers and students of Tsinghua University. Shijie Yu, Director of Tsinghua President Office, hosted the opening ceremony.
Prof. Yong Qiu made opening remarks.
Prof. Yong Qiu extended warm congratulations to the opening of SIIS 2016. Prof. Yao has been back at Tsinghua University for 12 years, as Prof. Qiu mentioned in his speech, and his team has made significant achievements on interdisciplinary sciences, especially the talent-cultivation program for undergraduate “YaoClass”, which substantially improved the international reputation of Tsinghua University. Prof. Jihong Zhang emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary sciences on the point of view of national scientific research strategy and brought great expectation to the academic achievements of the symposium.
Prof. Jihong Zhang made opening remarks.
Information science and its interaction with other disciplines provide one of the most active engines for innovation in modern science and technology. To spearhead the interdisplinary research in this important field, under leadership of Prof. Andrew Yao, the Turing award Laureate, the Institute for Interdisciplinary information Sciences (IIIS) was inaugurated in 2011 at Tsinghua University. This symposium coincides with the 5th anniversary of IIIS, inviting renowned scientists and discussing the current efforts on interdisciplinary sciences. Invited speakers include Porf. John Hopcroft, Prof. Silvio Micali, Prof. Christos Papadimitriou, Prof. Michael Jordan, Prof. Bin Yu, Prof. Ignacio Cirac, Prof. Yigong Shi, Prof. Jörg Wrachtrup, Jian Wang and Qi Yin, who will share on the latest research progress and development prospect in invited talks covering theoretical computer science, quantum information, information security, data science & AI, CS & Bio and FinTech.
Prof. John Hopcroft, winner of A.M. Turing Award, gave the first invited talk.
Prof. Andrew Chi-Chih Yao joined Tsinghua University in 2004, started undergraduate program YaoClass in 2005, founded ITCS in 2007, established IIIS and CQI in 2011, and built IIIS into a world-renowned interdisciplinary research institute. Led by Prof. Yao, IIIS has made great scientific achievements and research field covers AI+, quantum information and FinTech. The undergraduate program YaoClass won the first prize of National Teaching Award and was highly recognized as “the best program with top undergraduates” by Prof. John Hopcroft. The founding and development of the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS) enables China’s theoretical computer science disciplinary to experience a qualitative change. By the end of 2016, ITCS has published 46 papers at the 4 top conferences on theoretical computer science including STOC, FOCS, SODA and CCC, and 14 at Crypto and Eurocrypt, top conferences on cryptography. CQI has built 12 national international-level experiment platforms and published more than 160 papers on international academic journals, including 2 on Nature, 1on Science, 8 on Nature subjournals, and over 20 on Physical Review Letters, which greatly improved the international influence of China in quantum information. The newly founded Intelligent FinTech Institute is the first national research center adopting the latest information technology to improve the efficiency and competence of financial industry.
Group Photo
The symposium will last for two days with six sessions and is supported by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS).
(By Shuai Sun, photo by Xiang Li)
