Tang Xiao’ou (; 24 January 1968 – 15 December 2023) was a Chinese businessman and computer scientist. He was the founder and chairman of

SenseTime SenseTime is a partly state-owned publicly traded artificial intelligence company headquartered in Hong Kong. The company develops technologies including facial recognition, image recognition, object detection, optical character recognition, med ...

, an AI company. He also served as professor of information engineering, associate dean of engineering, and outstanding fellow of engineering at the

Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public university, public research university in Sha Tin, New Territories, Hong Kong. Established in 1963 as a federation of three university college, collegesChung Chi College, New Asia Coll ...

. Tang's research primarily focused on areas such as

computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the task of assigning a class to an observation based on patterns extracted from data. While similar, pattern recognition (PR) is not to be confused with pattern machines (PM) which may possess PR capabilities but their p ...

, and

video processing In electronics engineering, video processing is a particular case of signal processing, in particular image processing, which often employs filter (video), video filters and where the input and output Signal (electrical engineering), signals are vid ...

. Tang was honored with the Best Paper Award at the 2009

IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

. He served as the programme chair in 2009 and the general chair in 2019 for the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision. His editorial contributions include roles as an Associate Editor for both the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and the International Journal of Computer Vision. Additionally, Tang has been recognised as a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

Biography

Tang was born in

Anshan Anshan ( zh, s=鞍山, p=Ānshān, l=saddle mountain) is an inland prefecture-level city in central-southeast Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, about south of the provincial capital Shenyang. As of the 2020 census, it was Liaoning' ...

, Liaoning, northeastern China in 1968. Tang received a Bachelor of Science with a major in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the

University of Science and Technology of China The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) is a public university in Hefei, China. It is affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and co-funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Education of the People' ...

in 1990. He received a Master of Science from the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

in 1991 and a Doctor of Philosophy in ocean engineering from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1996. He worked at MIT and

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

during his doctoral studies. Funders of his research included the

Office of Naval Research The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan ...

of the

United States Department of the Navy The United States Department of the Navy (DON) is one of the three military departments within the United States Department of Defense. It was established by an Act of Congress on 30 April 1798, at the urging of Secretary of War James McHenr ...

. After graduating from MIT, Tang taught in the Department of Information Engineering of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2001, he founded the Multimedia Laboratory of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. From 2005 to 2008, he worked at Microsoft Research Asia. He served as Associate Dean of the

. In 2014, he spearheaded the first

facial recognition Facial recognition or face recognition may refer to: *Face detection, often a step done before facial recognition *Face perception, the process by which the human brain understands and interprets the face *Pareidolia, which involves, in part, seein ...

to beat human accuracy. Tang co-founded

with Xu Li in 2014. Upon SenseTime's

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in December 2021, Tang was estimated to have a net worth of approximately $3.4 billion. Tang died on 15 December 2023, at the age of 55. SenseTime made the announcement the next day and changed the colour scheme of its website to black-and-white in mourning. The Chinese University of Hong Kong also changed his faculty page to a black-and-white theme.

References

External links

Homepage at the Chinese University of Hong Kong SenseTime
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tang, Xiaoou 1968 births 2023 deaths Academic staff of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Artificial intelligence researchers Chinese computer businesspeople Chinese computer scientists Chinese expatriates in the United States Chinese technology company founders Chinese technology chief executives Fellows of the IEEE Machine learning researchers Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Microsoft Research people People from Anshan University of Rochester alumni University of Science and Technology of China alumni