After 3 years of pandemic, the School of Computer Science has finally been able to welcome international students to join our summer school on site! From July 3-14, 12 international undergraduate students from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Columbia University/Barnard College, University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, National University of Singapore and University of California, Berkeley joined us at Yanyuan Campus.
The Vice Dean, Prof. Minghui Zhou, kicked off the summer school on July 3 by giving a short welcome speech. The Dean, Prof. Zhenjiang Hu, gave an overview introduction of the School of Computer Science, including organization chart, academic, and programs for international students. Followed by that, representatives of the faculty members from the 8 institutions and centers within the School of Computer Science introduced in more depth regarding research-related.
(Prof. Zhenjiang Hu’s intro of the School of Computer Science)
The two-week summer school was packed with lectures from speakers all over the world with different background, lab presentations from different institutes/center within the School of Computer Science, research presentations over the topics such as programming language, embodied AI, block chain, open source software from current graduate students including both Chinese and international students, mini course on Computer Vision/Algorithm/Network Computing from faculty members, and of course, industry visits. The summer school students not only visited Baidu Apollo Park, ByteDance and Huawei, but also got to experience auto-drive cars while at Baidu. One student excitedly said that he has always been strongly interested in AI-driven technology, but could only get access to the latest news and achievements from articles and reports, and never thought that one day he could really sit in the Baidu’s Apollo Moon, the fifth-generation auto-driven car to feel the double impact of visual and physical sensations like never before. Another student who is a heavy TikTok user said that visiting Byte Dance felt like a dream come to life, like an old friend being reunited, everything was so unbelievable yet incredibly familiar, giving her the opportunity to finally visit a high-tech company that appears every day in her life.
(Students joining lecture)
(Students visiting showroom of the School of CS)
In their leisure time, they visited the Temple of Heaven, the Red Building of Peking University, Jingshan Park and other famous Beijing tourist attractions. In terms of food, they not only tasted the world-famous Peking Duck and traditional Beijing snacks, but also benefited from the fact that Beijing is a diversified capital city that brings together people from all over the country, and that the flavors of the eight major cuisines of China can all be found in Beijing. As is the case with food, so is the case with culture. The students expressed that they experienced a very diverse and long-lasting Chinese culture, and listened to the history and culture of this land that has blossomed over the past 5,000 years while visiting the famous places.
(Student’s presentation on Closing Ceremony)
(Students visiting Red Building of Peking University)
On July 14th, which was the last day of summer school, 12 students gave a group presentation on what they have gained and impressed them the most during the two weeks. They were able to get more insights into the generalization of machine learning in the real world as well as being able to connect their previous experience with the content. They not only obtained a broader vision on ChatGPT opportunities but also learned challenges of transformation and new AI avenues in the future. They were also exposed to real ROBOT at the lab, something they don't usually get to do in regular lectures at school. They were inspired by the research to design a new programming language and open source metrics they used to take for granted. After expressing their enjoyment of the theoretical lectures and laboratory practices they attended, the students also gave a lot of valuable suggestions for future students. Last but not least, the Dean, Prof. Zhenjiang Hu and the Vice Dean, Prof. Minghui Zhou distributed certificate to those 12 wonderful summer school students.
(Robotic Arm in Lab)
(Students visiting Baidu Apollo Park)
(Students focusing on presenter at ByteDance)
Two weeks of summer school has fled by, while we hate to say goodbye to them, we are thankful that they joined us on-site this year! We hope to welcome them again in the near future as our graduate students and of course, we hope to welcome more students next year for our summer school!
(Students taking photo at Peking University’s Weiming Lake)
