The Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (FCMS) is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor CAO Liangliang as Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence Systems in the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI), effective 29 June 2026.
Professor Cao obtained his Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2003 and Master of Philosophy degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2005. He further received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2011. Professor Cao began his career as Research Staff Member at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He then joined Yahoo Labs as Senior Research Scientist in 2015 and in 2016 co-founded Switi Inc., a startup which was subsequently acquired by Google in 2018. Following the acquisition, Professor Cao founded and led the Google Cloud Speech Modelling Team during 2018 and 2021. He later joined Apple in 2022 as Principal Scientist and Engineering Lead, and Google DeepMind in 2024 as Principal Engineer and Director. Most recently, he has served as an advisor at OPPO Inc. Professor Cao has also contributed to academia with adjunct academic appointments at Columbia University from 2013 to 2018 and at University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2021.
Professor Cao is a leading expert in artificial intelligence, with research focus on Artificial Intelligence, encompassing Computer Vision, Speech and Language across both cloud-based and on-device systems. He has played a key role in the development of several large-scale AI systems, including Google Cloud Vision, Google Speech, Gemini and Project Astra. His publications have received over 11,000 citations, and h-index of 53 (Google Scholar), with the filing of more than 15 patents and publications in top-tier AI venues across multiple areas including Computer Vision, Speech, and Natural Language Processing.
In recognition of his outstanding contributions, Professor Cao has been elected a Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2025. His accolades include IBM Watson Emerging Leader in Multimedia and Signal Processing and First Place in ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge in 2010, IBM Outstanding Accomplishment for Multimedia Team in 2012, ACM SIGMM Rising Star Award in 2017 and Google Cloud Feats of Engineering Award in 2019. He has also contributed significantly to the academic community, serving as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) and also on a number of journal boards and conference committees including IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, IEEE MultiMedia, Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, The Visual Computer, ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications, ACM Conference on Multimedia and AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, etc.
Welcome Professor Cao to the FCMS family.
Professor Cao obtained his Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2003 and Master of Philosophy degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2005. He further received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2011. Professor Cao began his career as Research Staff Member at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He then joined Yahoo Labs as Senior Research Scientist in 2015 and in 2016 co-founded Switi Inc., a startup which was subsequently acquired by Google in 2018. Following the acquisition, Professor Cao founded and led the Google Cloud Speech Modelling Team during 2018 and 2021. He later joined Apple in 2022 as Principal Scientist and Engineering Lead, and Google DeepMind in 2024 as Principal Engineer and Director. Most recently, he has served as an advisor at OPPO Inc. Professor Cao has also contributed to academia with adjunct academic appointments at Columbia University from 2013 to 2018 and at University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2021.
Professor Cao is a leading expert in artificial intelligence, with research focus on Artificial Intelligence, encompassing Computer Vision, Speech and Language across both cloud-based and on-device systems. He has played a key role in the development of several large-scale AI systems, including Google Cloud Vision, Google Speech, Gemini and Project Astra. His publications have received over 11,000 citations, and h-index of 53 (Google Scholar), with the filing of more than 15 patents and publications in top-tier AI venues across multiple areas including Computer Vision, Speech, and Natural Language Processing.
In recognition of his outstanding contributions, Professor Cao has been elected a Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2025. His accolades include IBM Watson Emerging Leader in Multimedia and Signal Processing and First Place in ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge in 2010, IBM Outstanding Accomplishment for Multimedia Team in 2012, ACM SIGMM Rising Star Award in 2017 and Google Cloud Feats of Engineering Award in 2019. He has also contributed significantly to the academic community, serving as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) and also on a number of journal boards and conference committees including IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, IEEE MultiMedia, Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, The Visual Computer, ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications, ACM Conference on Multimedia and AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, etc.
Welcome Professor Cao to the FCMS family.
