Jingren Zhou, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, has been named a 2024 Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the leading global organization in computing. This recognition acknowledges Zhou’s significant contributions to cloud computing and query processing.
The ACM Fellowship is one of the most prestigious honors in the computing field, awarded annually to individuals whose achievements have advanced technology and had a lasting impact on society. This year, only 55 individuals worldwide were selected as Fellows, representing the top 1% of ACM members. Candidates for Fellow must have at least 5 years of Professional Membership within the last 10 years.
With a career spanning over two decades, Zhou has contributed to advancements in large-scale AI systems, distributed computing platforms, and their applications in diverse industries. Before joining Alibaba Cloud, Zhou held senior leadership roles at leading technology organizations, where he focused on building scalable systems for data processing and machine learning.
In 2015, Jingren Zhou joined Alibaba Group, where he led the development of a next-generation computing platform, elevating Alibaba’s computing technologies to world-class standards. He later served as the President of Alibaba’s New Retail Intelligent Engine Business Unit, building a powerful search and recommendation system for Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms.
In 2020, Zhou spearheaded the development of large AI models, launching globally leading multimodal and multi-scale models, Tongyi Qianwen and Tongyi Wanxiang. He was also a pioneer in proposing the MaaS (Model-as-a-Service) concept, establishing ModelScope, China’s largest AI open-source community. This platform has provided over 40,000 high-quality AI models to over 10 million developers.
Jingren Zhou holds a PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University and has an extensive academic background. He has served as chair and committee member for numerous top-tier international academic conferences. He has also published over 100 research papers in top-tier international journals and conferences and has served as a reviewer for prestigious venues such as VLDB and SIGMOD. In recognition of his significant contributions to cloud computing and big data, he was named an IEEE Fellow in 2018.
“Computing technology has had a tremendous impact in shaping how we live and work today,” said ACM President Yannis Ioannidis. “The ACM Fellows program honors the creativity and hard work of ACM members whose specific accomplishments drive innovation and make broader advances possible. In announcing a new class of Fellows each year, we celebrate the impact of some of our community’s pioneers and highlight the many technical areas of computing in which they work.”
The recognition of Zhou as an ACM Fellow underscores the global significance of expertise and innovation in AI and cloud computing. For more information about the ACM Fellowship program and the full list of 2024 recipients, visit the ACM website.
