Chai Yang is currently a full Professor in the Department of Applied Physics, serving as the Associate Dean of Faculty of Science (Research) and the Director of Joint Research Center of Microelectronics at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is also an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, the Vice President of Physical Society of Hong Kong, a Member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences, and has been awarded funding from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. He has published over 100 journal papers with the total citations over 20,000 and an H-index of 72. He has been ranked in the "World's Top 2% Scientists" published by Stanford University, which recognizes the most cited scholars worldwide. His work on bioinspired in-sensor vision adaptation was recognized as one of the Top 10 Hong Kong Innovation Technology News in 2022, and his work on in-sensor motion perception was selected as one of the China Chip10 Sciences in 2023.
Today's AI heavily relies on digital hardware, which has inherent inefficiency in executing iterative AI algorithms, particularly when processing massive, unstructured sensory data. The number of sensor nodes in the Internet of Things is growing rapidly, leading to a large volume of data generated at sensory terminals. Frequent data transfer between the sensors and computing units is impeded by severe limitations on the system performance in terms of energy efficiency, speed, and security. To address the grand challenge of the computational inefficiency at sensory terminals, Prof. Chai proposed a bioinspired in-sensor computing paradigm that revolutionizes AI computation at the sensor level. He concretized this in-sensor computing paradigm through hardware implementation for vision sensors, enabling increased efficiency and enhanced functionalities, including improved image recognition, visual adaptation in extremely dim/bright lighting, and agile perception of dynamic motion, etc. This bioinspired in-sensor computing paradigm is highlighted in the US Semiconductor Research Corporation’s Decadal Plan.