China’s Tsinghua University scoops up AI researcher Alex Lamb amid academic turmoil in US

China’s Tsinghua University has recruited a prominent American artificial intelligence (AI) researcher to join its newly established AI institution, underscoring the intensifying competition between China and the US for top industry talent.

Alex Lamb, a senior researcher at the New York lab of Microsoft Research, will be joining Beijing-based Tsinghua University’s College of AI (CAI) as an assistant professor in the coming fall term, according to two people familiar with the matter. Lamb confirmed in an email to the Post that he is joining.

Lamb’s profile on the professional social network LinkedIn still lists his employer as Microsoft. Tsinghua did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Lamb’s appointment marks one of China’s most high-profile efforts to recruit top American AI scholars at a time when Washington is ramping up measures to restrict funding and exports to the country. AI has been a particular focal point for Washington’s tech curbs, as it is considered a key area of strategic competition between the two countries.

Alex Lamb, a distinguished AI researcher who studied under Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio, is set to join Tsinghua University as an assistant professor this summer. Photo: Handout

After obtaining a bachelor of science in applied mathematics and computer science at Johns Hopkins University, Lamb pursued a doctorate in computer science at the University of Montreal in Canada from 2015 to 2020, under the guidance of Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio.

Lamb has worked as a deep learning research scientist at Amazon.com and Google Brain, the Alphabet-owned deep learning research team, during which he was based in Tokyo.

South China Morning Post