Chinese AI giant Megvii’s chief scientist Sun Jian dies at age 45 of sudden illness
- Megvii scooped up the star research scientist from Microsoft in 2016, supercharging its efforts in deep learning
- Sun’s death comes ahead of a planned IPO in Shanghai after US sanctions on Megvii upended plans to list in Hong Kong
Sun Jian, the 45-year-old chief scientist of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm Megvii Technology, died on Tuesday of a sudden illness, which the company did not specify.
“Dr Sun Jian has dedicated his whole life to scientific research. With his unfortunate passing, Megvii has lost a leader in the exploration of and innovation in the AI technology field,” the facial recognition company said in a statement.
Sun, a former Microsoft researcher with years of expertise in computer vision and computational photography, joined the Beijing-based start-up as the chief scientist and managing director of research in 2016. While at the company, he led the development of ShuffleNet, a neural network that works efficiently on mobile devices, and Brain++, the company’s core AI productivity platform, among other breakthroughs, according to the website of Megvii Research, the unit that Sun established.
Prior to joining Megvii, Sun was with Microsoft Research for 13 years, starting as an associate researcher in Asia in 2003 and rising to become principal research manager and a partner in the US, according to a curriculum vitae on his personal website.
Sun was named by MIT Technology Review on its Innovators under 35 list in 2010, and he was the recipient of a range of industry and academic awards. He also had 35 US patents to his name, 13 of which were registered internationally, most of them from his time at Microsoft.
Born in October 1976, Sun returned to China when he joined Megvii. In 2019, he also became dean of the College of Artificial Intelligence at Xian Jiaotong University, his alma mater.
Sun’s tenure at Megvii covered some of its most tumultuous years. His death also comes just after the AI giant resumed its pursuit of a public listing on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-like Star Market last month, where it expected to raise 6 billion yuan (US$890 million), after its attempt to list in Hong Kong failed for reasons related to US sanctions.