Print - Prof. Min Sun, who is 35 years old, is going to foster another Fei-Fei Li and Andrew Ng

Prof. Min Sun, who is 35 years old, is going to foster another Fei-Fei Li and Andrew Ng

Prof. Min Sun, who is 35 years old, is going to foster another Fei-Fei Li and Andrew Ng

Looking back upon the progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Chinese society, we surely cannot miss two top experts coming from Stanford. One is Andrew Ng, who had worked in Google and Baidu, and now cooperates with Terry Gou. The other one is Fei-Fei Li, who is the chief scientist of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning of Google cloud. These two experts are hotshots in Computer Vision and Machine Learning respectively and we have to ask: whether they have chance to together instruct a new generation AI expert? Yes, they have. Assistant prof. Min Sun who is only thirty-five years old is their student.

Spend two to three times effort than other people

In the afternoon hit by cold wave, we arrived at prof. Sun’s lab in the department of EECS in NTHU. We saw that the students in his lab all engaged in presenting the progress of their project. Therefore, we know that prof. Sun an instructor having enough discipline.

Prof. Sun’s experience in the era that he study in USA is an epitome of assiduity. After graduating from the department of Electronic engineering in NCTU in 2003, he went to Stanford University to study in EE master program and major in circuit design. In the year, when he went into the classroom, he found that all of the students are Asian and he had the question: where are the American students? He latterly fund out that most of the American students were not interesting in Machine Learning. In addition, at that time, the society suffered from the burst of AI bubble. Prof. Sun is confused by this phenomenon and didn’t know that he were going to study this subject or not.

Latterly, he found that a group of American students strived to take Prof. Ng’s course and after getting a excellent grade, they work in his lab. They thought that it is equal to get the access of the Ph.D program in Stanford University. It is also a chance for Prof. Sun because he also aim to study Ph.D degree and teach in Universities. Therefore, he encourage himself to take Ng’s ML course as well as the American students did. However, the first challenge he faced is the course offered in English. Fortunately, every course in Stanford have been recorded. Therefore, when he had some question after the course, he would play the video again. If his question still didn’t be solved, he would ask tis partners in his study session and the TA.

Because of spending twice time than the other students, he got an A+, beat the 97 percent of his classmates and finally got the Prof. Ng’s attention.

After Min Sun got the master degree in Stanford, he originally wanted to stay in Stanford to study the Ph.D program. However, he didn’t get the access. Prof. Wu appreciated him and finally promoted Min Sun to Prof. Li teaching in Princeton University. To persuade Min Sun, Prof. Li gave him not only a job opportunity but also his wife’s living expense. Therefore, Min Sun decided to be Prof. Li’s Ph.D students. After joining in Prof. Li’s group, Min Sun learn not only language recognition from Prof. Li but also computer vision from her husband, Mr. Silvio Savarese, who is also do the research in AI.