Prof. Yaochu Jin is a fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, a Humboldt Artificial Intelligence Chair Professor, and president of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. His research ranges from the earthbound to the sky-high, from jet engines and adaptive cruise systems for automobiles to aircraft design at Airbus, vaccine prediction, medical image processing, and multi-robot coordination.

What sets him apart from most Westlake University professors is his 11-year tenure as a senior scientist and chief scientist in the R&D department of the Honda Research Institute in Germany. Despite this experience in industry, he has always retained the heart of a scholar dedicated to exploring fundamental principles.

After nearly three decades away from Zhejiang, he chose to return and join Westlake University's School of Engineering as a full-time chair professor for Artificial Intelligence.

Finding the Perfect Opportunities

People captivated by Jin's dazzling credentials and extraordinary experiences may envision a scientist whose life is a perpetual whirlwind of bold decisions and unexpected turns. While there is some truth to that perception, there is far more to the narrative.

Jin's professional journey has been marked by a striking lack of conventional job applications. Instead, his life has been graced by irresistible opportunities that seem to knock at his door. In his own words, "I find it hard to say no."

As we delve deeper into his story, we find a remarkable dichotomy. Jin, who can comfortably regard distinguished academics as his intellectual peers, proudly accepts that he is a "bookworm from a small town." He doesn't shy away from this label but wears it boldly, even featuring it in local media in his hometown. Born and raised in the picturesque village of Shengdun, nestled in the watery landscape of Pingwang Town, Suzhou, his family made their living from the soil. One of five siblings, Jin was the scholar in the family, a diligent child who often took charge of cooking for the household. Yet his heart danced to a different rhythm. He was an avid reader, so much so that even as he prepared meals for his family, books sat by the stove as his constant companions.

In 1980, his journey led him from the rustic embrace of the countryside to Pingwang Middle School in the midst of a bustling town. It was here that he began to shine as the quintessential "bookworm," effortlessly securing a place at the top of the science stream. A humble journey rapidly transformed into an exceptional path.

Jin demonstrated an extraordinary knack for excelling in all his academic pursuits. In 1988, he earned his bachelor's degree, followed by his master's in 1991, and eventually his doctoral degree in 1996, all from the distinguished Department of Electrical Engineering at Zhejiang University. Instead of venturing into uncharted territory, he chose to stay, contributing as a dedicated educator and a beacon of knowledge among his students.

Yet his path was unlike that of most academics. He never harbored ambitions of becoming a scientist. His childhood dreams revolved around driving a tractor, like his elder brother. His approach to life was refreshingly unconventional; he didn't lock himself into rigid, long-term plans. He lived by the philosophy of taking each step as it came, mirroring the patterns of biological evolution in nature. In his words, "I don't set specific long-term goals, but I'm always prepared for potential opportunities. It's the same as the mechanism of natural evolution. Without these adaptations, species can't survive when the environment changes."

Thus, the age-old adage "opportunity favors the prepared mind" became a constant reference in his life.

In a way that's unique to visionaries, Jin's transition from the field of automatic control to the mesmerizing world of artificial intelligence seemed like a leap of faith. Little do most people know that his affinity for libraries, the treasure troves of knowledge, led him to serendipitously discover a book by an Israeli scholar. It was a book that unraveled the mysteries of robot trajectory planning and genetic algorithms, and this chance encounter marked the genesis of his journey into the captivating universe of computational intelligence and artificial intelligence.

In another unexpected twist, after years of teaching at Zhejiang University, Jin ventured on an unconventional quest to Bochum Ruhr University in Germany, embarking on his second doctoral adventure. What is hidden from view is the dedication he invested in learning "every language he could" during his undergraduate and master's studies, laying a solid foundation in German. He sent out 20 meticulously handwritten letters to various German institutions, a testament to his unrelenting pursuit of the perfect opportunity to further his studies.

Jin's life story is one of serendipitous moments, of embracing change, and of being open to the unexpected. His journey is a testament to the profound truth that life's most extraordinary chapters often unfold when one is willing to let go of a predefined path and welcome the opportunities that come, even if they aren't part of the original grand plan.

As observers see him dedicating 11 years of his life to the Honda Research Institute (Europe), eventually rising to the prestigious position of chief scientist, they might assume that he was destined for a steady corporate career. However, behind the scenes, Jin remained true to his academic calling. He continued to write and publish research papers even while immersed in the fast-paced world of industry. This dedication to academic research would eventually prove pivotal as events took an unforeseen turn.

When the University of Surrey in the UK came calling with an invitation to join as a chair professor of computational intelligence, Jin found himself unable to make it to the scheduled interview due to prior commitments. It seemed like a missed opportunity, and for many, that would have been the end of the story. But a mere three months later, the University of Surrey extended another invitation. Their persistence was a testament to the high regard in which they held Jin, and his story took another exciting turn.

Throughout his journey, Jin embodied the motto "be prepared." It's as if he carried an invisible sign that attracted honor and recognition. The Humboldt Professorship is celebrated as the pinnacle of academic recognition in Germany. This prestigious award is designed to draw exceptional foreign researchers to Germany, with only a handful of individuals in the field of artificial intelligence being selected each year.

In a fascinating twist of fate, Jin received an email from Prof. Barbara Hammer, a distinguished AI expert at the University of Bielefeld, who happened to be a former colleague from his days at the Honda Research Institute. In her message, she extended an extraordinary offer: a nomination for the Humboldt Professorship. With everything meticulously prepared by the university, all that was needed from Jin was a nod of agreement and a copy of his CV. And so, in 2021, Jin was granted a research fund of 3.5 million euros for a period of five years and a coveted lifetime professorship at the University of Bielefeld in Germany.

When Jin was nominated as a "Finnish Distinguished Professor," yet another new chapter was written. This prestigious title, limited to just over 10 individuals each year, is bestowed by the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation to attract foreign talent to Finland.

At a Dagstuhl Seminar in Germany, Jin met Prof. Kaisa Miettinen, a renowned figure in traditional multi-objective optimization research. Miettinen, also the vice-rector of the University of Jyväskylä and former president of the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, was impressed by Jin's work. She nominated him for the title, proposing that he visit the University of Jyväskylä for four months a year for three years. Jin, known for embracing opportunities, readily accepted this warm gesture from his friend.

The title was a prestigious honor, so the University of Surrey accommodated Jin's annual "Finnish time." To this day, he fondly remembers those special times in Finland, where he immersed himself in research in the tranquil Finnish surroundings. During his free time, he explored the forests, admired the lakes, and even indulged his passion for cooking. It was a period of reflection, exploration, and creativity in the serene Finnish landscape.

Research: Enabling Artificial Intelligence to Learn from Nature

In the field of AI, the tumultuous discussions ignited by the emergence of ChatGPT continue to reverberate. People are in awe of AI's capacity to engage in question-and-answer interactions and perform an array of tasks such as coding, translation, email composition, copywriting, and video script generation.

Undoubtedly, this marks one of the most remarkable waves in the third AI revolution that began around 2010. With the proliferation of high-performance computers, the internet, big data, cloud computing, and sensor technologies, "deep learning" has risen to the forefront, enabling machines to learn from vast data sets and recognize speech and images like humans.

The question that has surfaced repeatedly in the past year is whether humans will be supplanted by artificial intelligence in certain areas. Jin, who has spent more than three decades engaged in AI, believes that this is still a distant prospect. The reason is straightforward. AI based on large models can only address specific issues and lacks the ability for autonomous learning, causal reasoning, and generating new knowledge.

Jin believes that a potent approach to breaking free from the current bottleneck of reliance on large model-based AI is to learn more from nature. Biological and natural intelligence have consistently served as AI's teachers. At present, the most successful deep learning models mimic biological learning mechanisms, especially the human brain. However, to more accurately simulate biological intelligence, two other vital factors must be considered: evolution and development. Evolution pertains to the fundamental principles of survival of the fittest and natural selection proposed by Charles Darwin in the 19th century. Development, on the other hand, refers to the process by which individual life forms grow from birth to maturity.

"My research goal is to explore a new path towards achieving general artificial intelligence by simulating and organically integrating the most essential mechanisms of biological evolution, development, and learning," Jin states. In July of this year, he summarized his 15 years of work in the field of evolutionary developmental artificial intelligence and published a monograph titled "Computer Evolution of Neural Systems and Morphological Development — Toward Evolutionary Developmental Artificial Intelligence." He hopes this work will serve as the starting point for exploring new forms of general artificial intelligence technology in the next decade.

The official page of the Humboldt Foundation states, "Yaochu Jin is one of the leading pioneers of swarm robotics.” He considers the morphogeneses of self-organizing systems to be his most distinctive innovation. Morphogenetic swarm intelligence involves the use of gene regulation mechanisms, cell interactions, and the interactions between organisms and their environment during the biological development process to achieve "collective" intelligent behavior.

Why, during embryonic development, do cells continuously divide from a single cell to eventually form a specific organism? Why do identical bamboo plants grow differently under varying light conditions, resulting in distinctive shapes? "No one is teaching them how to do it; it's entirely a self-organizing behavior. This is highly useful in many practical applications, such as coordinating control in swarm robots or multiple drones," Jin explains.

Imagine a robot as equivalent to a single cell, or different modules of a modular robot to be like different cells within a biological organ. By simulating biological developmental processes involving control and interactions between cells, robots can, like cells during biological development, spontaneously accomplish specific tasks. Jin was the first in this field to introduce the application of gene regulation and morphogenetic mechanisms to self-organizing swarm robots and modular robots, coining the term "Morphogenetic Robotics" with his collaborators.

Jin's best-known and most highly cited work, as well as being the one that has had the greatest impact, is evolutionary computation research. Evolutionary computation involves introducing the principles of natural evolution into the field of artificial intelligence to address complex system optimization and decision-making problems. Questions like which smartphone offers the best value for money, which stock investment offers the highest return, or how to design a car to minimize resistance while maintaining stability—these are all practical optimization problems. Traditionally, resolving these issues relied on mathematical approaches, assuming the existence of an analytical mathematical formula (i.e., an objective function) that is capable of calculating the "optimal solution." In real-world scenarios, however, many problems have objective functions that cannot be effectively described using simple mathematical formulas, much like the complex evolutionary processes in biology.

Jin’s remarkable contribution to the field of evolutionary computation is a testament to his pioneering spirit and commitment to innovation. His ability to design evolutionary algorithms that effectively tackle complex problems that cannot be resolved by traditional mathematical methods is nothing short of groundbreaking. The impact of his work extends beyond academia, as it has been instrumental in optimizing a wide array of complex engineering systems. Jin’s dedication to providing "better solutions" resonates in his relentless pursuit of both lofty and practical goals.