(Yicai Global) Sept. 18 -- Alibaba Cloud Computing Co., a subsidiary of Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. [NYSE:BABA], has opened China's first Big Data Institute in Guiyang, the capital of China's southwestern Guizhou province, in conjunction with the city's Institute of Technology, state-run China News Service reported.

The academy's first batch of 295 freshmen attended the official opening ceremony over the weekend.

The institute offers a four-year undergraduate education with core majors including network engineering, data science and Big Data technology and plans to train 10,000 professionals and technical personnel for the province within five years.

Alibaba Cloud and Guizhou Institute of Technology signed a cooperation agreement at the end of 2016 to jointly establish the facility. Construction started during the 2017 China International Big Data Expo held in May this year. The pair have co-built a smart teaching cloud platform to provide online teaching resources, live-teaching streaming and an online practice platform for students to provide resources for students.

The establishment of the Big Data institute is an important step for the development of industry talent in Guizhou and has exemplary significance in the country, said Zeng Yu, party secretary for the technology institute.