2024 Lecture review

Overview: In this workshop, the speaker will introduce a thought-provoking exploration of how scholars approach theorizing in the social sciences. The workshop highlights the importance of “heuristics,” which are strategies and methods that researchers use to frame problems, generate ideas, and uncover new insights. Rather than promoting a rigid methodological approach, this workshop encourages a more creative and dynamic process of discovery, one that blends empirical observation with theoretical innovation. Throughout the workshop, the speaker will present different modes of reasoning, such as case comparisons, historical sequences, and causal analysis, offering practical tools for thinking critically in social research. This workshop will reflect on the heuristic perspective and explore how it can inspire more flexible and imaginative approaches to social science inquiry.

Date: 27 November, 2024

Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Beijing Time)

Venue: Multifunction Room 03, The Library

Dr. Yisu Zhou is an associate professor at the University of Macau’s Faculty of Education and the Department of Sociology, by courtesy. He has researched diverse areas of people and institutions in the educational setting. Zhou’s research stems from his lifelong interest in understanding people and places, which he developed since his days as a rural schoolteacher in 2005. He has published in American Journal of Education, Discourse, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of School Health, Sociological Methods and Research, etc. Zhou has been serving the UM community for more than a decade. Notably, he has served, by election, as FED representative to the university senate from 2014-20, during which he was elected as the senate officer from 2018-19. Zhou’s longstanding love for reading and books led him to the university library committee, which he served as a member during 2013-20. Professionally, he actively engaged in the scholarly community and received an outstanding reviewer award from Educational Researcher in 2015. Zhou’s service work reflected his thinking of higher education as an ecology of knowledge experts. He penned the FED’s five-year strategic plan (2020-25), advised on the University Library’s strategic plan (2020-25) and architected FED’s Doctoral of Education program.

Overview: Participants will learn about advanced techniques and models in this AI era, that allow for the disentanglement of visual factors in images and the compositionality of underlying factors to produce more meaningful representations for the specific domain of computer vision. Disentanglement and Composition are believed to be one of the possible ways for AI to fundamentally understand the world, and eventually achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Specifically, we will cover the following topics:

1. Disentangled Representation Learning (DRL);

2. Latent Semantics Discovery;

3. Disentanglement and Equivariance;

4. Composition and Disentanglement for AGI.

Date: 23 October, 2024

Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Beijing Time)

Venue: IEB 123

Dr. Xin Jin received a PhD degree from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2022. Prior to this, he had the privilege of being a visiting scholar at the Learning and Vision Lab of the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 2021 to 2022. Additionally, he spent time conducting research at the Intelligent Multimedia Group (IMG) within Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) from 2019 to 2020, and at KDDI Research, Inc., in Japan, from 2018 to 2019. Currently, he serves as a tenure-track assistant professor at a new emerging university of the Eastern Institute of Technology in Ningbo, China, where he leads a dynamic team focused on cutting-edge research in deep learning, computer vision, and intelligent multimedia. His primary research interests lie in advancing intelligent visual signal coding and analysis, which align perfectly with the goals and interests of the IEEE IVMSP community.

Overview: In this talk targeted at early career academics, Prof Prashantham draws upon two decades of academic life to share ideas about the joys and struggles of life in academia. A key theme of the talk is recognizing and grappling with various tensions, such as that between the pressures of research versus teaching, internal versus external audiences, and professional versus personal demands. The talk will highlight the speaker’s belief that social scientists in general and business school academics in particular need to work hard at developing ideas that have both scholarly and practical relevance. It will also be argued that traditional success metrics such as publication output, citation counts and teaching evaluation scores should be supplemented – perhaps even supplanted – by seeking purpose and enjoyment from life in academia.

Date: 11 October, 2024

Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM (Beijing Time)

Venue: Multifunction Room 02, The Library

Dr. Shameen Prashantham is Professor of International Business & Strategy at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, China. Prior to CEIBS he taught at Nottingham University Business School China and the University of Glasgow. He holds a PhD from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. His research focuses on corporate-startup partnering, corporate entrepreneurship, new venture internationalization, global strategy in and from emerging markets and strategy as practice. He has published in academic journals such as Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of International Business Studies and Journal of Management Studies as well as practitioner-oriented outlets such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. He serves as an Associate Editor for Journal of Management Studies. He is the author of the widely acclaimed book, Gorillas Can Dance: Lessons from Microsoft and Other Corporations on Partnering with Startups.

Overview: In recent years, significant progress has been made in large language models (LLMs) and other types of generative AI. With the ground-breaking capability of interacting with their users by generating human-like responses in continuous conversations, generative AI models epitomised by ChatGPT have been anticipated to make revolutionary changes in a myriad of industries and professions. Against this background, the current talk aims to initiate a discussion on the following questions:

1. What is the basic mechanism of ChatGPT?

2. How are ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools reshaping the landscape of various disciplines?

3. What is the core of human-AI collaboration?

4. How can HSS researchers and students make full use of ChatGPT in professional practices including writing, translation, and academic research?

5. How can the use of ChatGPT be integrated into digital humanity studies?

Date: 3 June, 2024

Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Beijing Time)

Venue: Multifunction Room 03, The Library

Dr. Ke Hu is a lecturer of Translation Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-SZ). He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Translation Studies from The University of Melbourne. Before joining CUHK-SZ, Ke worked as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Ke’s research interests lie in large language models, translation technologies, corpus studies, and translation reception research. Ke is also a Professional Translator certified by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) of Australia.

Overview: This speech is a brief introduction to experimental methods of management and Neuromanagement. Related concepts, applications, and challenges of experimental methods in the present management research will be introduced and discussed. Meanwhile, this speech will introduce the concept of Neuromanagement and some mainstream neuroscience tools, which are often used in experimental research of Neuromanagement. Based on some classical articles, this speech will also discuss the applications and challenges of neuroscience experiment methods in management studies.

Date: 23 May, 2024

Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Beijing Time)

Venue: Multifunction Room 02, The Library

Dr. Wuke Zhang is an Associate Professor in Department of Management Science and Engineering, Business School, Ningbo University. He is very interested in using data mining, questionnaire survey, behavioral experiment, and cognitive neuroscience methods individually or comprehensively to conduct research on consumer psychology and neural decision-making. His co-authored research output has appeared in business, psychology, and neuroscience journals, including Electronic Commerce Research, Journal of Consumer Affairs, Journal of Happiness Studies, Psychology Research and Behavior Management, Neuroscience Research and so on. He is also guest associate editors of Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Overview: While every discipline is different, effective graduate students share habits that make them more effective at managing their advisors, their research agenda, and their careers. In this presentation, the speaker will offer pro-active suggestions for PhD students interested in managing these three pillars of their career. To manage advisors, the speaker will provide tips for establishing effective communication patterns, preparing for meetings and completing projects. To build a research agenda, the speaker will provide suggestions on how to identify topics, keep projects moving forward, and managing collaborations. To develop their careers, the speaker will underscore the need for students to build relationships across institutions and within their disciplines. If graduate students take care to manage the three pillars, they will move more quickly towards graduation, publication, and securing their first academic position.

Date: 17 January, 2024

Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM (Beijing Time)

Dr. Jason Bennett Thatcher holds the Milton F. Stauffer Professorship in the Department of Management Information Systems at the Fox School of Business of Temple University. He has also held visiting faculty appointments at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the Information Technology University-Copenhagen. He is Honorary Professor of Management Information Systems at Nottingham University Business School China, UNNC. He has been ranked among the top scholars in Social Sciences by Research.com and named among the top 2% most productive researchers in the world in a study published in PLOS Biology. Jason’s work has earned 15,000+ citations.

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