Big data a boost for TCM

When a young Nevin Zhang Lianwen left China in 1987 to study overseas for a year, he didn't know his journey would eventually lead him back home to help the country become a front-runner in developing artificial intelligence, a potentially world-changing technology.

"The frameworks I learned that year were of particular importance to my later research on AI," Zhang said in his office at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

In 1987, Zhang was studying applied math at Beijing Normal University when the Chinese government sponsored him to participate in a one-year exchange program at the University of Kansas in the United States. He studied under Glenn Shafer, an American mathematician and statistician known for his evidence theory. It was there that Zhang's AI journey began.