Beijing ACI Trip 2025

In May 2025, I had the opportunity to travel to Beijing as part of the Turing AI Scholars Programme (TAISP) ASEAN, India and China (ACI) trip. It was an eye opening experience that combined visits to China's top universities with exposure to cutting edge AI research.

We departed Singapore late at night (hungry at 2am as we awaited our in flight meal!) and touched down in Beijing at 9am. The excitement was real. We're finally here!

Our first stop was the Forbidden City. The scale of it was something else. HUGEEEE courtyards that seemed to stretch endlessly. Walking through the ancient palace complex, I couldn't help but appreciate the Chinese architecture. The sun was blazing, but the aesthetic views made it worth it.

The Great Wall was next, and the views were magnificent. Standing on those ancient stones, looking out at the wall snaking across the mountains, it really hit me how impressive this structure is.

The academic portions of the trip were particularly impactful. At Tsinghua University, we interacted with faculty and students from the prestigious Yao Class. We attended lectures on applied mathematics and the limitations of deep learning. Though I'll admit, there were moments where I couldn't quite follow the class and resorted to taking photos of slides instead. We also got a glimpse of Tsinghua's Quantum research labs and visited their art museum, which had a beautiful gallery about embroidery.

Peking University had particularly magnificent natural landscapes and architecture. We attended mini crash courses conducted by senior undergraduates, including one on lattice cryptography. Another class I got lost in, but the exposure to these advanced topics was valuable nonetheless.

One highlight was our visit to Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA). We learnt about the latest research being conducted at Microsoft and how AI is incorporated into their products, from LLM based chatbots to voice synthesizers.

At the end of each day, we were free to explore the city on our own. We frequented shopping districts and Chinese eateries, making sure to be back at the hotel before curfew.

Personally, I feel more pressure having interacted with the Chinese students to embark on more self learning initiatives. A common theme observed was their active research undertakings, with all of them starting research early in year 2. While this could be attributed to their accelerated curriculum (they complete all academic modules in 2.5 years), we should still hold ourselves to their standards. In a highly globalized and interconnected world, these talented and driven individuals are, for better or for worse, our competition.

As a personal commitment to improve my technical abilities, I plan to familiarize myself with PyTorch over the summer and undertake research opportunities. It's apparent that simply adhering to the prescribed curriculum will not bring us to the level required to succeed in the AI field. Learning must take place outside of it.

Saying goodbye to Beijing was bittersweet. Those final steps in the airport, the view of the moon from the plane window on our way back. It marked the end of an incredible trip that's left me motivated to push harder in my studies and research.