Chuang (Vincent) Tao
Chuang (Vincent) Tao, PhD
Chairman and CEO, Z Ventures Group
Adjunct Professor, York University, and Wuhan University
Dr. Tao is a visionary, entrepreneur, investor and researcher who has developed successful organizations under various culture environments both in China and North America. Z Ventures Group has invested and incubated nearly 100 companies in tech, media and internet sector. He is adjunct professor of five universities and actively gets involved in research and pursuit of technology development.
Vincent is founding partner and former CEO of PPTV, China’s leading online TV provider who has served over 300 million active user worldwide and built the world-class video cloud system based on its proprietary technology with over 400 data farms in China and worldwide. Vincent founded his first company GeoTango a pioneer in internet 3D mapping and was acquired by Microsoft. Vincent was the founding member of Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping program. He was instrumental in building the Microsoft’s global mapping platform that serves for over 150 countries and regions.
Prior to his entrepreneur venture, Vincent held Canada Research Chair Professorship at York University, Toronto. He was recognized by his peers as a world-class expert in mapping. Vincent has authored and co-authored over 200 technical papers, and holds a number of technical patents.
Vincent has received many awards and distinctions for his achievements including 2014 China top 100 most influential person, 2014 top 100 tech investor, Ernst and Yong the Most Impactful Entrepreneur Award, NIKON Imaging Award, NSERC Industry-University Synergy Award etc. Vincent has also contributed to the establishment of Tao’s Student Engineering Scholarship at York University, and Tao’s Innovation Award at Wuhan University.
Spatial Intelligence：A New Wave to the Geospatial Industry and Academia
As Big Data (BD) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are well under development, a new term coined as "Spatial Intelligence（SI)” will become a norm. As a matter of fact, this is indeed a game changing era that will disrupt the way we develop systems and applications. In this talk, we will present how big data and AI are influencing the way we offer solutions, ranging from data collection, to data processing and data analytics. Comparing to any previous work, the most important concept of SI is its predictiveness. Spatial pattern is complex and full of uncertainty. There are many approaches that have been developed to understand them but failed to make acceptable results. SI opens up a new way to provide a solution that is reasonable good. Rather than the traditional logical process, SI makes use of AI and massive data to offer a predictive result of any spatial patterns. As our machine is getting powerful enough, we are able to generate numerous simulating results. Further, location is an index to many spatial patterns. With massively collected location data, one can use SI to depict the future outcomes in our physical world. With SI, we are finally able to understand the complex spatial pattern and develop efficient measures to handle many negative spatial patterns. Z Ventures Group is an investment and incubation company that has invested nearly 100 companies. We will provide an industry viewpoint to SI and its impact to the industry, academia and education.
