On March 19, the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) welcomed Mengchu ZHOU, Distinguished Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, as a guest speaker of the SUSTech Lecture Series.

Invited by Max Q.-H. MENG, Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at SUSTech, Professor ZHOU delivered a lecture titled “A Multi-discipline Approach to Advancing Knowledge Distillation Technology” to an engaged audience of faculty members and students.

Professor Mengchu ZHOU explored the key role of knowledge distillation technology in artificial intelligence (AI) and the challenges it faces. He noted that most existing research follows a teacher-centered approach, in which the teacher network is trained according to its own standards before transferring the learned knowledge to a student one. However, due to differences in network structure between teacher and student ones, the knowledge learned by the former may not be truly desired by the latter.

To address this, Professor ZHOU’s team drew inspiration from automatic control theory and fuzzy logic concept to propose a student-centered distillation (SCD) method that enables the teacher network to adjust its knowledge transfer according to the student’s true needs.

To further enhance student learning, his team introduced and improved proportional-integral-derivative (PID) algorithms from the field of control systems, allowing for precise identification of key knowledge points and effectively addressing issues such as knowledge gaps, difficult sample learning, and knowledge forgetting.

During the interactive Q&A session, faculty members and students engaged in a lively discussion with Professor ZHOU, exploring the application of multidisciplinary approaches in knowledge distillation and the technical challenges involved. He encouraged students to continue exploring the intersection of multidisciplinary research and modern engineering technologies, embracing the limitless possibilities this field has to offer.