(Yicai Global) Nov. 30 -- Feng Jinwei, former principal engineer at video conferencing multinational Polycom Inc. [NASDAQ:PLCM], has joined the core artificial intelligence team at Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s [NYSE:BABA] Institute of Data Science and Technology (iDST), the latter said in a statement.

Feng studied at China's top acoustics research institute, Nanjing University's Institute of Acoustics, and learned from Chinese audio guru Sha Jiazheng. He and his supervisor developed the world's first automatic test system for the cone resonance frequency of loudspeakers, which helped improve production efficiency in the country's electroacoustic industry.

The new Alibaba team member worked at Polycom for 17 years and developed more than 10 US patents, most of which have been put into production. The world-class audio expert will act as a researcher at Alibaba's intelligence voice interaction team and be responsible for acoustic designs and signal processing for its speech-interactive devices.

"Feng's arrival will combine physics and the internet," said Yan Zhijie, director of the iDST's voice team. "Alibaba takes a serious view of the whole intelligent voice technology process, and will gradually build a world-class team of experts. We will start from the source and signal collection and create a groundbreaking experience on devices."

iDST's technology platform will transform users' voices into commands for mobile phones, connected cars, televisions, smart speakers and other terminals. The team's technical developments have already been successfully applied in a range of scenarios, including intelligent customer service systems, video auditing and real-time subtitle transcription, voice-print verification, the Internet of Things and other scenarios.