Beyond: Yu Yong and his talented youth group
Latest update time：2022-12-31
Reads：
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In the past 20 years, Yu Yong, China's earliest computer education evangelist, and his students Lin Chenxi, Dai Wenyuan, Hu Zheren, Li Lei, Li Mu, Chen Tianqi, Wang Mingji, Zhang Weinan, Zheng Zhao, etc., have jointly written countless legendary stories ”
Author | Dai Congfei
Editor | Cen Feng
Twenty years ago, Shanghai Jiao Tong University made a decision in three days: to establish an ACM class.
This directly promoted the development of China's computer technology, and the ACM class was later known as the "Cradle of Artificial Intelligence CTOs."
The founder who proposed this idea was Yu Yong, who was just over forty at the time.
01
Soul-casting inspiration:
From ACM champion to ACM class
On June 16, 2002, six years after serving as the head coach of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University ACM International College Student Design Programming Competition (ACM-ICPC), Yu Yong’s long-cherished wish finally began to see the light of day: to cultivate China’s own Computer scientist.
On this day, Yu Yong approached the principal in charge of school teaching and applied to establish an ACM class at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
It may be hard for you to imagine that for such a major decision, Yu Yong received approval from Shanghai Jiao Tong University on the 18th the next day.
What's more, at that time, there was no real reference for reference in China. The well-known Tsinghua Yao Class only released its enrollment plan three years later (in the fall of 2005).
However, what is even more difficult for you to imagine is that
behind the
three-
day approval is Yu Yong’s six or even twenty years of accumulation.
One of the important reasons why Yu Yong was able to get approval so quickly was that in March of that year, Jiaotong University students Lin Chenxi, Lu Jing, and Zhou Jian formed a team and won the first ACM-ICPC championship on behalf of China.
Yu Yong’s education complex can be traced back even further.
Yu Yong
Yu Yong, who wanted to be a teacher since he was a child, chose East China Normal University, a well-known education institution. Here, two people had a profound impact on Yu Yong.
One was Liu Funian, the then president of East China Normal University. At the opening ceremony at that time, Liu Funian said that being a teacher should not only teach well, but also understand education.
At that time, Yu Yong did not yet have a deep understanding of the meaning of the word education, but he understood that it was definitely different from teaching to education. It was also from this time that Yu Yong determined to be an educator.
Another person who impressed Yu Yong deeply was Zhang Donghan, the then director of the Computer Department of East China Normal University.
One day, East China Normal University held a lecture, and the speaker was Zhang Donghan. This report could not be said to be very grand, but it was remembered by Yu Yong in the audience for a long time.
That night, Zhang Donghan on the stage talked endlessly; Yu Yong off the stage was immersed in it.
To this day, Yu Yong can no longer remember the main content of that report, but he still knows the situation well.
"There was no podium, just a chair facing the students, and he sat in front of the stage." Yu Yong recalled, "It's not clear what he was talking about, but the master's style of elegance and knowledge will never be forgotten."
This experience made Yu Yong, who was already studying at a normal university, more determined in his pursuit of "preaching, teaching, and solving doubts."
In 1986, after graduating from East China Normal University with a master's degree, Yu Yong chose to become a teacher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where he has been for thirty-six years.
At Jiaotong University, Yu Yong’s earliest salary was 128 yuan, which has remained unchanged for several years. At the same time, wages in foreign companies have been calculated in thousands, and 2,000 yuan is almost the bottom line.
This also caused Yu Yong to hear voices urging him to give up Jiaotong University, but Yu Yong remained unmoved. And his opportunity finally began to get closer.
In 1996, ACM-ICPC entered China, and Yu Yong became the first person to form a team to participate in the competition.
However, success is never easy to come by.
Even in 2002, under some "divine" manipulation, the God of destiny favored them, Yu Yong created history, and the ACM class was successfully established. And behind this is the sincere cooperation of a group of talented teenagers.
As mentioned earlier, the three students who helped SJTU win the world championship are Lu Jing, Lin Chenxi and Zhou Jian.
Today, Lin Chenxi is already the co-founder of Yitu Technology, a star company in the field of artificial intelligence.
But Lin Chenxi was not originally a computer science student. She majored in materials, which is now often ridiculed as one of the "four major sinkholes."
In the process of selecting the ACM team, Yu Yong unexpectedly discovered Lin Chenxi, a talent, and Lin Chenxi finally lived up to his expectations.
In Yu Yong's opinion, Lin Chenxi is steady, clear-minded, and has a strong sense of the overall situation, making him suitable to be the captain.
"He has a very clear mind and will not be affected by the people around him. He is a person who can achieve great things." At that time, Yu Yong made such a judgment.
This can also be seen from Lin Chenxi retaking a year of computer science courses.
At Yilin Chenxi's level, even though she changed her major, there is no need to re-study. Many students often re-study as a last resort, but Lin Chenxi chose to take the initiative to re-study for a year.
"The reason we didn't win the championship is not because we can't do it, but because we don't dare to think about it." After winning the championship, Lin Chenxi mentioned this sentence many times in front of his teammates.
In order to prove this sentence, he decided to pursue his dream of ACM-ICPC championship at the expense of graduating one year later.
In comparison, Lu Jing is more like a high-spirited genius.
In 2000, Lu Jing had not participated in the competition. But when he saw the questions brought back by his classmates, his eyes were filled with light, "I can do all these questions."
"Lu Jing is a genius." Lu Jing's appearance surprised Yu Yong. He knew that he had dug up a treasure, but he still had no definite answer as to how to make this treasure shine fully.
The next year, in 2001, they hesitated whether Lin Chenxi would continue to participate in the competition.
Each person can only participate in the ACM competition twice, so there are not many opportunities. In the end, Lin Chenxi was arranged to wait for the 2002 competition.
The reason is that although Lu Jing is very good, he still feels a little worried about participating in the finals for the first time.
As a result, Lu Jing was sent to participate in the 2001 ACM-ICPC and really failed.
But this experience made Lu Jing understand a truth: ACM-ICPC is a team competition. No matter how strong an individual is, it is impossible for one person to solve the problem.
After the turn of the year, Lin Chenxi and Lu Jing brought their junior brother Zhou Jian to form a team to compete and win the ACM-ICPC world championship.
For Yu Yong, the championship may not be the most important thing.
More importantly, Yu Yong was given the opportunity to express himself freely, and took this opportunity to establish the ACM class, which started the legendary story of Jiaotong University in the fields of computers, artificial intelligence, and deep learning in the next twenty years.
"The championship is not my goal. I feel that after winning the championship, I have this bargaining chip to let the school let me do what I want to do. This is the most important thing."
Yu Yong said this when communicating with Leifeng.com in 2019.
Indeed, it was the fire in Yu Yong's heart that was constantly ignited that led to what happened at the beginning of this section: Yu Yong established the ACM class as he wished, and in the next twenty years, it trained Dai Wenyuan, Li Mu, Chen Tianqi, Li Lei, and Zheng Zhao Waiting for a large number of great figures in the field of artificial intelligence.
Of course, there are more than just "AI masters" coming out of here. In 2018, a 2004 student from the ACM class finally became a teacher at Harvard Medical School after many years of wandering;
In addition to academic research, ACM students have also participated in the creation of a number of well-known companies, including Ele.me, Yitu Technology, 4Paradigm, Senyi Intelligence, Liulishuo, TouchPal Technology...
And this comes from the unique culture of the ACM class.
Whether it is "dare to imagine" that Lin Chenxi often mentioned, or "teamwork" that Lu Jing realized, they are all part of the ACM class culture.
But for Yu Yong, the core of the ACM class culture is "transcendence": he hopes to use the ACM competition as an opportunity to explore a top-notch talent training model with Chinese characteristics so that a group of talented teenagers can achieve "transcendence."
Not only can they achieve good results in college, but it also allows them to go further and more steadily in their longer lives.
As the ancients said: If you don't plan for everything, you can't plan for a while; if you don't plan for the overall situation, you can't plan for a region.
Yu Yong, who is well aware of this, requires far more from students than just professional courses, although he spends considerable energy in finding the best teachers for the ACM class.
In his opinion, it is a student's instinct to learn professional courses well, and they will definitely pay attention to them, while abilities outside the major are sometimes even more important to them.
This idea is also reflected in the "Student Forum", a course that Yu Yong is solely responsible for and unique to the ACM class: in this course, Yu Yong is not the absolute leader, and every student is an important participant.
In terms of content, it talks about all aspects of non-computer literature and current affairs. The course is divided into four semesters, and each student teaches it once a semester, and the subject material is customized.
Although this course is not a professional course, many ACM class students who communicated with Leifeng.com said that if they had to choose a course that has the greatest impact on them, it would definitely be the "Student Forum."
Another similar course is "Teaching Practice". This is a compulsory course, and each student in the ACM class is required to complete at least one lower-division teaching assistantship in the four years of undergraduate study. Through the interaction between senior students and junior newcomers, the traditions of the ACM class are passed down from generation to generation, forming a virtuous cycle.
All these things not only help students understand dreams and pursuits, responsibilities and obligations, gratitude and tolerance, but also build a truly outstanding team, the ACM class, starting from a championship team.
02
Unity of knowledge and action:
Always Challenge Miracles
2002 was the turning point for Yu Yong to achieve his ideal as a teacher. This year, Dai Wenyuan stood at the first crossroads of his life.
Public reports show that Dai Wenyuan was studying at Suzhou Middle School at the time. He was qualified to be admitted to any domestic university through competition very early. He originally had the opportunity to go to Tsinghua University. But choosing Tsinghua University does not guarantee a major, and Dai Wenyuan only dreams of studying computer science and representing China in the World Informatics Competition.
At this time, Yu Yong, who was preparing for the first ACM class, paid attention to this rare seedling. Yu Yong couldn't find Dai Wenyuan's contact information, so he called Suzhou Middle School and asked him to tell Dai Wenyuan.
Suzhou Middle School also cooperated very well, which made the later stories of Dai Wenyuan and Yu Yong possible.
Although Qingbei always seems to be on a higher level than other schools in China, in Dai Wenyuan's view, chasing one's dreams is more important. He accepted Yu Yong's invitation and became the brightest star in the first ACM class of Jiaotong University.
In 2005, Dai Wenyuan led the team to participate in ACM-ICPC on behalf of SJTU and won the world championship. And this, only three years after Jiaotong University last won the championship, declared the success of the ACM class to a certain extent, and Dai Wenyuan became famous in this battle.
Dai Wenyuan
Four years later, Baidu extended an olive branch to him, hoping that he would join Baidu and participate in the construction of Fengchao.
As for some past events of Fengchao, we have already shared many details in “A Brief History of China’s Advertising Engine” .
In short, for Baidu at that time, Fengchao was the top priority.
The purpose of the ACM class is to "cultivate computer scientists," but many students here seem to have their own judgments about their personal future: some want to make achievements in society early, while others want to give up scientific research and start a business.
There is nothing wrong with this, but most students are not very clear about the long-term goals they pursue in life, or their judgments are still short-term.
Luo Yulong, a junior of Dai Wenyuan and a member of the 2007 ACM class, still remembers that when he mustered up the courage to come to Yu Yong's office and expressed his idea of "giving up direct research and choosing entrepreneurship", Yu Yong got angry on the spot, thinking that this was a betrayal of the ACM class's educational goal of "cultivating computer scientists".
At least, entrepreneurship should be considered after finishing graduate school career, otherwise it will simply be a loss and waste of high-quality resources.
Luo Yulong
couldn't help crying
on the spot
, but he eventually participated in the entrepreneurial wave.
A few years later, Ele.me swept the Chinese food delivery market, and Luo Yulong, one of the founding team members, has become the senior vice president of Ele.me.
But looking back on that time, Luo Yulong still feels guilty and feels sorry for Teacher Yu.
Yu Yong does not want students to stay in the ivory tower forever, nor does he oppose entrepreneurship. However, he advocated that students can continue their studies when they have no idea about their future life, at least not hastily terminating their student career at the undergraduate level.
But from another perspective, the ideal that can withstand the test of "teacher getting angry on the spot" is naturally not a slap on the forehead, but a well-thought-out long-term goal in life. No matter how many difficulties you encounter in the future, you can continue to move forward firmly.
Integrating knowledge and action and pursuing excellence were also important reasons for their later success.
Compared with Luo Yulong, Dai Wenyuan was already in the Ph.D. stage when he chose Baidu, and his entrepreneurial career would have to wait until he became famous a few years later.
Dai Wenyuan did not choose Google or Microsoft, which were the most coveted places for top talents at the time, but chose Baidu.
When he first arrived at Baidu, Dai Wenyuan's team had only three people. Fortunately, they chose the right path and soon became the best-performing team for Baidu and created the largest revenue for Baidu.
Baidu, which focuses on commercialization, will continue to invest resources once it sees the benefits. Dai Wenyuan's team has expanded from a few people to more than a hundred people. A person involved told Leifeng.com that by the time Dai Wenyuan left, there were more than 100 employees under direct management alone. If other cooperating teams are included, the number would be four to five hundred.
In 2011, due to the success of Fengchao, Dai Wenyuan won the title of Best Baidu Person.
Chen Yuqiang joined Baidu in 2012. Dai Wenyuan was Chen Yuqiang's "little mentor" in the ACM class. When Chen Yuqiang enrolled in 2005, Dai Wenyuan won the second ACM-ICPC World Championship trophy for Jiaotong University.
When Chen Yuqiang joined, Dai Wenyuan and his team already had the idea of turning to deep learning.
Unlike five or six years ago, although deep learning has theory, its implementation is not realistic.
In 2012, deep learning has gradually approached maturity, and Baidu is shifting from logistic regression to the direction of deep learning.
The joining of people like Chen Yuqiang and Chen Shixi added a catalyst to the construction of Baidu's deep learning, helping Baidu Fengchao build the world's first commercial deep learning system.
After achieving success at Baidu, Dai Wenyuan quietly left and moved to Huawei, where he served as the chief scientist of Huawei's Noah's Ark Laboratory.
According to previous reports, Dai Wenyuan’s main purpose of choosing Huawei was actually to learn how to provide corporate services and accumulate experience for his later entrepreneurship.
A year later, Dai Wenyuan left Huawei and founded what is now known in the industry as the Fourth Paradigm (the name comes from Jim Gary, a Turing Award winner and former Microsoft technical academician, who gave his last speech before disappearing on a boat at sea in January 2007 It’s about the “Fourth Paradigm,” intensive data-driven scientific discovery.
Chen Yuqiang left Baidu almost at the same time as Dai Wenyuan. When Dai Wenyuan was at Huawei, Chen Yuqiang went to Byte to help him build an artificial intelligence algorithm recommendation system.
(Here is a preview. Regarding how Chen Yuqiang, Liu Xiaobing and others built the business empire of Byte, Leifeng.com will write another article "Who is making the giant engine profitable?" in the near future. Please stay tuned. Readers are welcome to add the author on WeChat Congc_a , communicate more.)
A year later, at the invitation of Dai Wenyuan, Chen Yuqiang reunited with his senior brother and participated in the entrepreneurship of Fourth Paradigm.
A few years later, Dai Wenyuan found his junior brother Zheng Zhao and invited him to join.
In the ACM class where talents gather, Zheng Zhao is also a shining star. In 2010, it was Zheng Zhao who led the team to win SJTU's third ACM-ICPC world championship.
After that, Zheng Zhao worked at Google for many years.
In the summer of 2017, Zheng Zhao was working on the reconstruction of personalized search and recommendation systems at Pinterest. Dai Wenyuan extended an olive branch, and after careful consideration, he returned to China to participate in the work of the Fourth Paradigm.
As a star in the first-generation ACM class, Dai Wenyuan gathered many talented young people around him: Chen Yuqiang, Zheng Zhao, etc., and these people have become the driving force for the development of the fourth paradigm.
03
Breakthrough innovation:
A star-studded gifted class
Dai Wenyuan is certainly one of the most dazzling students in the 2002 ACM class, but ACM, a class for talented young people, is destined to have more than one shining star.
In the 2002 ACM class, the class leader Hu Zheren was the first to successfully IPO, and the Liulishuo he founded was extremely popular at the time.
As for academic research, Li Lei, who won the best paper in ACL 2021, may have done his part. When he was a student at Jiaotong University, Li Lei had the best grades in the class, and his total score was almost always first in the class.
Li Lei
Li Lei also came from computer competitions. The establishment of the ACM team and ACM class gave him the opportunity to enter Jiaotong University: that year, he forwarded the application materials to Yu Yong through Lin Chenxi, and then he had the opportunity later.
Li Lei is best known to outsiders for his five years in Byte. That is, in 2016, Li Lei returned from the United States and joined the ByteDance AI Lab.
However, Li Lei has always been focused on academic research.
In 2021, he chose to end his five-year career in Byte and return to the United States to join the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) as an assistant professor.
Different from Dai Wenyuan’s entrepreneurial pursuit, although Li Lei has worked for Baidu, Byte and other companies. But even in these companies, Li Lei is mainly responsible for academic research.
Li Lei entered APEX LAB in 2004. It was also at this time that he began to consider his future plans: whether to study for a Ph.D., whether to go abroad, etc.
He asked Lin Chenxi for advice, and Lin told him categorically, "You must, because if you want to learn martial arts, then you must go to Shaolin Temple, the best place in the world, to see how the masters fight."
In this way, Li Lei made up his mind to apply to prestigious foreign universities, and finally got his wish.
A few years later, Li Lei departed from Shanghai and went to the United States on the other side of the ocean to begin his study abroad career. He first received a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 2014, Li Lei ended his three-year postdoctoral research career at the University of California, Berkeley, and joined Baidu America Research Institute.
Interestingly, many students in the ACM class have become contributors to Baidu. This may have a lot to do with Baidu's undisputed technical culture in the early years.
In addition to Dai Wenyuan and Li Lei, the first batch of ACM class students, many of the subsequent students were also the backbone of Baidu Technology.
Li Mu, a student from the class of 2004, is one of them.
It is also a coincidence that Li Mu had two short periods of Baidu experience, one from April 2011 to August 2012; the other from April 2014 to December 2015, which happened to correspond to the Baidu periods of Dai Wenyuan and Li Lei respectively.
In this circle, in the final analysis, no one has gone far.
In the ACM class, Li Mu was called "Brother Mu" by his classmates. His roommate Li Zuofan once described it in his memories, "Brother Mu has been nicknamed since his freshman year. It is probably because his leadership aura is hard to suppress and emanates from the inside out, making people look up to him."
In his junior and senior years, Li Mu became the core class cadre of the class: monitor and league secretary. It seems to be carefree, but in fact it is rough and detailed, and it is never ambiguous on important matters.
This character trait seems to have remained unchanged even after many years.
On the last day of 2015, Li Mu laughed at himself in the circle of friends: "I have been on the world's largest male dating website (GitHub) for 15 years, doing everything based on interest."
Afterwards, Li Mu completed the grand "New Year's Eve" ceremony in the CMU computer room.
Moving forward four years, Li Mu is working as a senior researcher at Baidu. He has created a distributed machine learning advertising system for Baidu.
With the recommendation of Yu Kai and Zhang Tong, Li Mu received an offer from CMU and went to the United States for further study. At CMU, Li Mu studied under machine learning master Alex Smola and distributed systems professor Dave Andersen.
This time, his partner is Chen Tianqi, who is Li Mu's junior brother.
Like Li Mu, Chen Tianqi also chose to study in the United States after graduating from Jiaotong University, but he chose the University of Washington (UW).
At that time, Chen Tianqi received offers from UW and CMU at the same time.
When he visited CMU to study, Chen Tianqi met Li Mu, whom he worshiped as a great master at the time. Li Mu sighed, "Now is the time when big data is booming, but when we graduate, we don't know what the times will be like, but the reverse is true." You can always do something more important."
This also paved the way for the two's subsequent collaboration.
The dramatic thing is that although Chen Tianqi chose UW, he eventually became an assistant professor at CMU.
Having said that, Chen Tianqi is also a top talent in the field of deep learning. Chen Tianqi entered the Jiaotong University APEX laboratory in his junior year and studied machine learning with Dai Wenyuan. However, at that time, he just felt that it was "high-end", so he chose this subject.
A few years later, he finally became more and more obsessed with it and became one of the pioneers.
When he was at the University of Washington, XGBoost, which he was passionate about, was highly praised by the industry. As the ultimate implementation of the gradient boosting tree model, XGBoost has extremely strong prediction capabilities and extremely high operating efficiency. It is not only used in academia, but also widely used in industry.
This was also the basis for Li Mu, Chen Tianqi and another ACM alumnus Wang Jiji to jointly create MXNet.
(When deep learning was on the rise, a group of pioneers such as Li Mu, Chen Tianqi and Jia Yangqing, as well as domestic companies represented by Baidu, took the lead in entering into deep learning framework research. Leifeng.com plans to write another article "
Pure and Extraordinary: Chinese Pioneers of AI Framework"
》, please continue to pay attention. Readers are welcome to add the author WeChat ExperienceMachine and communicate more.)
Wang Jiji recalled that in Denver in 2014, he, Li Mu and Chen Tianqi, three students from the ACM class, met at OSDI and talked about their respective research. Li Mu’s professional field was multi-machine distributed training, and Chen Tianqi’s CXXNet included efficient and With a rich operator library, Wang Jiji’s Minerva can accelerate multi-GPU training. The three people share the same idea of how to design better deep learning systems, and their respective projects and professional fields complement each other.
So MXNet came into being. The name of MXNet is taken from the combination of Minerva and CXXNet.
The MXNet project went from scratch to 1 in just one year to build a complete architecture.
Chen Tianqi later recalled that this was the first time he saw the creativity brought by working together. He began to understand that the joy of research is not only about publishing papers, but also about what you can bring to others. Or, to put it more boldly, how to change the world together.
MXNet is one of the most mainstream open source codes in the deep learning era. It was selected by Amazon as the basis for AWS deep learning, and is as famous as Google TensorFlow and Meta (Facebook) PyTorch.
On Zhihu, Li Mu wrote the development history of machine learning as a martial arts novel, comparing MXNet in the world of cultivation to a "small group of casual cultivators", while TensorFlow is the "largest genre platform".
This is literature and art that belongs uniquely to Li Mu, and it is also the atmosphere that belongs exclusively to the ACM class.
Because they are not just pure technical geniuses; their knowledge is rich and colorful, which is why they have such descriptions and records full of wild imagination.
04
Passing the torch:
Boyu who never stops moving forward
Because of the outstanding achievements of many students in the ACM class in the field of artificial intelligence, the ACM class began to be called the "cradle of artificial intelligence."
But Yu Yong doesn’t just think this way. He believes that education should remain unchanged in response to ever-changing changes. Now even if artificial intelligence is not the rise, students in the ACM class can still stand out in other emerging fields.
Being able to have such self-confidence goes far beyond SJTU's training of students in computer education or professional skills. What is more important may be other soft powers that may not seem so important, such as the cultivation of humanistic qualities. This enables ACM students to not only have the ability, but also the awareness to explore new fields independently.
Many young people may label themselves, but Yu Yong has always emphasized to his students that they should not label themselves. Things that you are not interested in now may become addicted to you one day in the future, which gives students in the ACM class more unlimited possibilities.
During the communication with Leifeng.com, Yu Yong kept emphasizing this point.
"I don't want to fill their heads, I do want them to be curious. So, we are not just for artificial intelligence. Maybe there are new things, and the students in our class can still become another Whampoa Military Academy."
At this point, Yu Yong showed an extremely confident look. While communicating with the students in the ACM class, we further understood Yu Yong’s confidence.
Li Lei also mentioned in an exchange with Leifeng.com that the students in his ACM class were not only from computer competitions, but also included outstanding candidates from mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology competitions and school selections. In the computer-oriented ACM class, many people still maintain their "original aspirations."
In his view, the foundation laid by the ACM class makes it easy for them to achieve success no matter which direction they choose. "It's just that most of us just happen to choose computers."
These people dare to try new things and are obsessed with them.
Indeed, the training of ACM classes has never been limited to computers. They even have subjects such as student forums that look like "liberal arts professional courses."
Yu Yong does not want students to learn everything in school. Of course, he may not be able to do it. But it is this clever blank space that gives these students more possibilities.
They are free, they are brave, they work hard.
They experienced a great educational experiment in computer science in China, and their participation and exploration paved a new path for computer education with Chinese characteristics.
This is how things are today: these ACM class students are shining like stars in every corner of the world.
For Yu Yong, who has been teaching for more than 30 years, he still has a lot of work to do, such as extending the experience accumulated in the ACM class.
During repeated foreign exchanges, Yu Yong deeply felt the enthusiasm of students from outside, which gave him the idea of establishing an education school.
In 2018, artificial intelligence courses began to be introduced into high schools, and Yu Yong’s original plan to open a school after retirement was brought forward several years.
After thinking clearly, Yu Yong explained his ideas to the school leaders. Just like when he first founded the ACM class, Yu Yong once again received a positive response. The premise is: the teaching of the ACM class cannot be discarded.
The ACM class was an almost perfect answer given by Yu Yong at Jiaotong University, and Jiaotong University also gave Yu Yong enough trust and tolerance.
Because of this, Yu Yong was able to freely seek famous teachers at Jiaotong University and even throughout Shanghai. For example, Yu Yong invited Zhu Hong from Fudan University to be responsible for algorithm teaching. The latter enjoys a high reputation not only in Shanghai, but also nationwide and even internationally.
Compared with the ACM class, Yu Yong's new project Boyu Education is more like his personal ideal. It cannot be said that it has no intersection with Jiaotong University, but it is also far from it. Boyu is no longer targeting Jiaotong University students, but all students across the country who are willing to learn artificial intelligence computers.
But in terms of the guiding ideology of "promoting students' active learning", Boyu Education and ACM classes are no different.
Yu Yong’s ideas about Boyu education can be traced back to the first decade of the 21st century.
At that time, Yu Yong was still the dean of the department in charge of teaching. All undergraduate, master's and doctoral students were under Yu Yong's management, so it was better to have a close relationship with most of the students. He always stood from the student's perspective and did his best to meet the students' demands. .
For example, one of the most critical stages for undergraduates at that time was direct admission. Since the school gives the same direct admission ratio to each major, it is impossible to increase it. In order to provide more students with opportunities and qualifications, Yu Yong creatively thought of conducting equal exchanges with other domestic schools.
In short, at that time, many colleges and universities offered direct admissions, with a certain proportion of students from our own school and those from other schools. Through exchanges with schools such as Fudan University and Zhejiang University, Yu Yong has met the demands of many students for direct admission and helped them get opportunities for further study.
After graduation, many students still miss Yu Yong. Having taught so many students, it is difficult for Yu Yong to always remember every student, but almost all of them will always remember Yu Yong.
One year, Yu Yong went to the United States and met a student. He couldn't remember it clearly. The student took out a graduation photo with Yu Yong and said excitedly, "This can prove that I am your student."
His connection to these graduates goes far beyond that. A Jiaotong University graduate who works at Qingdao Ocean University has invited Yu Yong to Qingdao many times to give lectures and exchanges with local students. Yu Yong, who was invited again and again, finally couldn't refuse.
It was this exchange that made Yu Yong realize the gap in educational resources across the country. Yu Yong talks for an hour, but it may be difficult to escape for two hours. The students have so many questions. "Some very simple questions are very confusing to them." Yu Yong lamented.
From then on, whenever he had time, Yu Yong accepted almost all invitations. Some of these schools may be third-rate universities, or even junior colleges, and later primary and secondary schools. Yu Yong tried his best to attend as long as he could schedule.
Such experiences made Yu Yong feel a greater responsibility on his shoulders,
"I do belong to Jiaotong University, but I think I should still belong to society."
Yu Yong's teacher complex has a subtle influence on countless students, including many talented young people who returned to Jiaotong University to study with Boyu and reunited with their mentor.
In 2016, Zhang Weinan, who graduated with a PhD from the University of London (UCL), chose to return to China and, like Yu Yong, became a teacher at Jiaotong University.
Zhang Weinan
While at UCL, Zhang Weinan studied under Professor Wang Jun, a master of data science, and achieved remarkable research results in the fields of machine learning and data mining, and established a variational method to calculate advertising bid optimization system.
"My life at that time was to work on Google's research projects during the day, and when I got home at night or on weekends, I would do research on data science algorithms and participate in data mining competitions around the world." Zhang Weinan and Leifeng.com recalled their life back then.
Zhang Changwang, a classmate of Zhang Weinan's at UCL, commented on him, "At that time, Weinan often walked late in the laboratory every day and was one of the group of people who stayed in the laboratory."
After graduating with a doctorate a few years later, Zhang Weinan chose to return to China without any hesitation and joined Shanghai Jiao Tong University to become a teacher like Yu Yong.
In Zhang Changwang's view, Zhang Weinan's choice of Jiaotong University when he returned should be a carefully considered decision. "He has interned in many large companies and knows what is actually going on in the company. Needless to say, he knows a lot about the school. Weinan should have a relatively clear plan for the future."
This is also in line with Yu Yong’s training direction for students. Rather than majoring in majors, Yu Yong hopes that these students will have a clear understanding of the future and establish their life goals early.
Yu Yong is still walking on the road of education without stopping, and his students have begun to become evangelists.
Zhang Huichu, one of the promoters of Boyu Education, is a post-90s generation and a graduate of the ACM class.
Zhang Huichu, who was born in 1994, had a smooth journey before coming to Jiaotong University. However, after arriving at Jiaotong University, he was under great pressure from academic top students around him. He once gave up on himself and his grades plummeted.
It wasn’t until his junior year that Zhang Huichu set sail again, studying for a PhD at Jiaotong University, during which he also went to Cornell University for exchange studies.
After graduation, he was invited by his mentor Yu Yong to become a promoter of Boyu Education.
There are many students like Yu Yong who regard teaching and educating people as their career.
Even on the issue of the "successor" of the ACM class, Yu Yong also has his own ideas. "I hope he is a student who has returned from abroad and has a passion for education. I feel that only in this way can we cultivate good students."
Moreover, Yu Yong hopes that his successor will sacrifice his personal interests for the class when there is a conflict between the class and his personal interests. Only in this way can the ACM class and its spirit continue.
A teacher is someone who teaches, teaches and resolves doubts.
Yu Yong has trained a group of talented teenagers who are scattered in all corners of the world, but they always inherit the spirit of the ACM class.
Yu Yong is still walking on the road of education. He hopes to cultivate more geniuses for Jiaotong University and society. His story with geniuses continues.
05
Join hands and transcend:
It takes ten years to grow trees and a hundred years to cultivate people.
"Teacher Yu is too difficult."
In the process of communicating with alumni of the ACM class, Leifeng.com heard this sentence more than once.
In 2012, in the book Hand in Hand, a collection of essays commemorating the tenth anniversary of the ACM class, Yu Yong wrote:
We often hear such sighs: Today's students have no pursuits, lack ideals, and lack passion. My answer: Wrong! They happen to be a very ambitious generation, but we cannot understand them, and even fewer people study how to understand them.
When he first founded the ACM class twenty years ago, the main difficulty Yu Yong encountered was figuring out "how to understand them" and inspire their ideals and passions without any experience.
This can be seen from the continuous adjustments to the early curriculum and teaching plans of the ACM class.
With the accumulation of time and experience, Yu Yong's considerations have turned more to the inheritance of the spirit of the ACM class.
During his nearly three decades of teaching at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Yu Yong has witnessed the evolution of many experimental pilot classes: from the earliest pilot classes to the teaching reform joint reading classes established in the 1990s, and then to the science experimental classes (on which Zhiyuan College was later established) - although these changes have brought new opportunities for the cultivation of outstanding students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, they have also brought some discomfort to these graduates.
In Yu Yong's view, once a class is established, it must be thought through clearly, rather than being established overnight and then changing it at will when new ideas are available. He always considers students from their perspective. “It’s easy to start a class, but consider its sustainability as well as its necessity.”
Yu Yong still remembers that at a school anniversary event a few years ago, the joint reading class was no longer available, and some students were not received when they returned to school. Yu Yong told them. "You can still find Teacher Yu. You are still students in the computer department."
Because of this, Yu Yong attaches more importance to the sustainable development of the ACM class - the ACM class was established based on the ACM-ICPC championship. In the first ten years, the ACM class won the ACM-ICPC championship three times and competed for talents. Proven myself in training.
But in the second decade, Yu Yong will face more and more complex problems. The centralization of educational resources makes it more difficult for Jiaotong University to attract the best students for competitions; in addition to competitions, the ACM class needs to deliver equally excellent results in other fields (such as scientist training).
In the second decade, we have seen gratifying changes in the ACM class: John Hopcroft and other strong players joined Shanghai Jiao Tong University, making the ACM class more international; and the graduates of the ACM class have also grown gradually, and there are currently more than 30 ACM alumni have obtained teaching positions at home and abroad.
It takes ten years to grow trees and a hundred years to cultivate people. It lasts for ten years, and the ACM class needs more ten years to explore new areas.
In 2021, Yu Yong revealed in an exchange with Leifeng.com that the theme of the 20th anniversary event of the ACM class in 2022 will be "transcendence". This is because the motto of the ACM class is "Hand in Hand and Transcendence", which not only requires working together to make progress, but also allows students to self-aware of their life aspirations and realize them, so as to change the world together in the future.
Looking back on the first twenty years of the ACM class, this is not only the cooperation and transcendence between students, but also the cooperation and transcendence between Yu Yong and the students.
As Yu Yong said to Leifeng.com:
“It is my dream to train Turing Award winners. Maybe it will never come true, but I enjoy meeting different versions of myself.”
【Want to see more inside information hidden in this article? 】 Due to the length of the article, some content cannot be displayed. Welcome to add the author’s WeChat Congc_a. The author of this article, Dai Congfei, has been paying attention to companies such as ByteDance, Tencent, and Kuaishou for a long time.
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