(Yicai Global) July 18 -- The Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute, which is dedicated to promoting the application of artificial intelligence in brain science research, today announced the launch of a series of AI university competitions, with a prize pool of CNY300,000 (USD41,800) for the first stop.

The first stop of the global university tour called AI for Brain Science will be Shanghai’s Tongji University, one of the first universities in China to get approval to launch an AI major.

The two-month first stop will focus on three sections: AI-empowered brain science creative contests, machine vision-based neuroglial cell recognition competitions and brain-machine interface professional competition, in which all undergraduate as well as master’s and doctoral students can participate.

Participants of the brain-machine interface professional contests need to complete signal analysis algorithms of the brain-machine interface control system, while the machine vision-based contests for neuroglial cell recognition aim to find and identify risk genes related to Alzheimer’s disease, Yicai Global learned from Tongji University.

Earlier this month at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, the Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute announced that it will invest CNY1 billion (USD138 million) to support the integrated development of AI and brain science.

The non-profit organization, founded by Chen Tianqiao, chairman of global investment group Shanda Group, and his wife, Chrissy Luo, has been funding brain science research projects since 2016.

The institute also announced in March that it would recruit AI talent from around the world, especially algorithm engineers with experience in large language models and natural language processing.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Peter Thomas