Nowadays, the traditional discipline of ship and ocean engineering are facing transformation and upgrading. The mechanics-based discipline system gradually extends to the emerging frontier disciplines such as artificial intelligence and the kernal of the discipline is enriched by the aid of the integration with intelligent control and machine learning. In order to meet the needs of the transformational development of the discipline in the new era, the School of OCE announced the establishment of the Ship and Sea Intelligent Unmanned Technology Research Center (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Center’) on May 28, and experts from the Institute of Natural Sciences (INS) were invited to deliver research presentations. 

The founding ceremony was chaired by Associate Dean of the School of OCE, Prof. Ben-long Wang. Prof. Shi-jun Liao, Dean of the School of OCE and Director of the Center, and Deputy Directors of the Center, Prof. Hong Yi, Prof. Tie Li and Prof. Jun Fan also attended this ceremony. The distinguished guests included Prof. Shi Jin, Dean of INS, Prof. Wei-dong Liu, Secretary of the Communist Party of Committee in the School of Mathematical Sciences (SMS), Prof. Xiao-qun Zhang, Associate Prof. Zheng Ma and Associate Prof. Zhi-qin Xu from INS/SMS. 

Director of the Center, Prof. Shi-jun Liao, made a welcome speech. He said, “The world has entered the era of wisdom and intelligence. Artificial intelligence based on mathematics and information science would be the key to the future. Through the cooperation with INS and SMS, the interdisciplinary research work in the field of ship and ocean intelligent unmanned technologies will be promoted. Talents which are urgently needed by the industry will be cultivated. Next generation intelligent equipments will be built. The center will be a platform for talent cultivation and scientific research”. 

Dean of INS, Prof. Shi Jin made the remarks at the opening ceremony. “The problems in interdisciplinary subjects give vitality to mathematics. The establishment of the Center is a good start for the collaboration and cooperation among INS, SMS, and OCE. More in-depth research is expected to be carried out in the future so that mathematical theories and algorithms can play an important role in research on intelligent equipment and technologies of ship and ocean engineering,” he said. 

In the session of research talks, Prof. Shi Jin delivered an oral report entitled “Consensus-based Non-convex Optimization for High Dimensional Machine Learning Problems”. He introduced a non-convex optimization method in machine learning.

Prof. Wei-dong Liu made a presentation about distributed machine learning.

Professor Hong Yi introducted the development paradigm worldwide and the strategy of China. Intelligent systems in civil and military fields in several major powerful countries were then discussed. He pointed that the future would be a new ocean era led by intelligence. 

Professor Xiao-qun Zhang delivered an academic report entitled “Mathematics Models and Algorithms and applications in Image and Data Science”. The research work in her team related to image processing, especially in the field of medical image processing and fast algorithms were introduced.

Associate Professor Zheng Ma delivered an academic report entitled “Kinetic Equations and Machine Learning”. The applications of kinetic equations, numerical challenges and methods, machine learning physical models were introduced.

Associate Professor Zhi-qin Xu made a presentation entitled "The frequency principle of DNN”. The theory of frequency principle and its application were comprehensively introduced. A better understanding of the training process of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) was demonstrated.

At the end of the forum, Prof. Shi-jun Liao expressed his sincere thanks to the honorable guests. Stressing the importance of the Center for facilitating the collaborations, promoting the application of artificial intelligence, he called for carrying out more in-depth collaboration, cooperation, and intercommunion between the schools for the collision of academic insights and ideas.