Ling Shao

Ling Shao is a British-Chinese scientist and entrepreneur in the field of artificial intelligence, best known for founding both the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IIAI) and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the world's first AI university. He served as Founding Provost and Executive Vice President of MBZUAI (2019-2021), where he led MBZUAI's academic affairs and research, ensuring the university delivered world-class higher education and research in AI.

Ling Shao received his B.Eng. degree in Electronic and Information Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2001, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. (D.Phil.) degrees from the University of Oxford in 2002 and 2005, respectively. His research interests include Computer Vision, Generative AI, Multimodal AI, Vision and Language, and AI for Healthcare. He has authored/co-authored over 500 papers in top conferences/journals, including CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, TPAMI and IJCV, and holds over 30 US/EU patents.

Career History

• Chief Scientist and President of Terminus International, Terminus Group (2022–present)
• CTO and Chief Scientist, National Center for Artificial Intelligence (NCAI), Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) (2021–2022)
• Founding CEO and Chief Scientist, Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IIAI) (2018–2021)
• Chair Professor in Computer Vision and Machine Learning, University of East Anglia (2016–2018)
• Chair Professor in Computer Vision and Machine Intelligence, Northumbria University (2014–2016)

In recognition of his scientific contributions to the UAE, he was awarded the Mohammed bin Rashid Medal for Scientific Distinguishment (the highest scientific honor in the UAE) by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime-Minister and Vice-President of the UAE, and the Ruler of Dubai. Dr. Shao has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, and several other journals. Shao has been elected a Fellow of the IEEE, the IAPR, the IET and the British Computer Society.

What Ling Shao could bring to Inception Institute as Founding Provost: Based on his documented career, Shao brought deep expertise in building world-class AI institutions from the ground up—having founded IIAI and launched MBZUAI, establishing it as the world's first dedicated AI university. His vision combined cutting-edge research with institutional excellence, demonstrated through his establishment of international research centers that gained rapid global recognition. His appointment as Founding Provost leveraged his ability to attract elite researchers (leading IIAI's 100+ AI scientists), design innovative educational programs, and position emerging institutions at the forefront of global AI advancement during a critical period of exponential growth in the field.