(Yicai Global) July 13 -- Tsinghua University, one of the top colleges in China, has founded an artificial intelligence research institute to lead the way in development of the leading AI development.

Zhang Bo, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will head up the institute as dean, while Turing Award winner Andrew Yao and Google executive Jeff Dean will offer support through committee roles.

The faculty plans to explore basic theories behind artificial intelligence in a bid to disrupt the sector and create key technologies through interdisciplinary studies in education, business and industry.

The technology plays a major role in China, and some of the its top tech companies, like Alibaba and Tencent, are using it to provide facial-recognition payment services and smart home speakers that rival the likes of Amazon's Echo. Some 71 Chinese colleges were offering 86 courses in the field as of December, according to the Director of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Education, Lei Chaozi.

Tsinghua is China's most adept college in AI research, and ranks the second best in the world according to CSRankings, which grades the globe's educational institutions across a range of computer science segments. But despite being top dog in the country, Tsinghua wasn't the first to set up a specialist AI department or research.