Technology + Practice: The Bricks and Mortar of Future Talent
We have truly entered an age of digital and intelligent transformation with more than 170 countries around the world having released national digital strategies. The need for digital and professional experts is growing by the day, but talent shortages still plague the industry. Huawei has always believed technology can be the bricks for talent development, while practice continues to be the mortar. This is why we are committed to building a comprehensive enablement system that can cultivate tens of millions of digital and intelligent professionals. We are also working hard to create a fertile space, a vibrant ecosystem, where digital and intelligent professionals will thrive. When people thrive, industry prospers and society can develop more sustainably. The Huawei ICT Academy is an integral part of this system, as it serves as a platform for collaboration between Huawei and the universities that nurture some of the world's greatest talent. Through this platform, we are able to cultivate a thriving digital and intelligent talent ecosystem. However, there is always more that can be done. Over the coming years, Huawei plans to continue reinforcing our professional development efforts in the field of ICT on three fronts.
First, we are prioritizing practice-oriented innovation to make sure our courses are aligned with real-world needs.
While the classroom is an indispensable source of knowledge, putting that knowledge into practice is critical for building real-world skills. The Huawei ICT Academy offers training courses in 22 different technical domains to share knowledge, but just offering standard courses isn't enough. And so, we are focusing on making sure these courses leverage practice and application to ensure we are not only building knowledge, but also capabilities. So far, we have crafted 85 high-quality, practice-oriented courses, and we've worked with professors like Dalian University of Technology's Ma Ruixin to develop courses like his System Analysis and Design, which have gained national recognition for their quality. We have also been collecting real-world projects and case studies and weaving them into our courses. All of these courses use the Huawei Cloud platform to help students bridge the gap between theory and practice and better prepare for their future careers.
We continue to develop high-quality teaching resources from around the world by working with the 6,000 universities that have chosen to work with us. Already, these efforts are benefiting more than 500,000 students each year and creating a valuable runway to connect students with industry.
Second, we are reinforcing industry-education collaboration and training for teachers.
Teachers play a pivotal role in education. They are the engineers co-shaping our future. To help them better equip their students with industry-ready skills, we are deepening ties between education and industry, providing educators with classes on our software platforms, as well as dedicated training camps. To date, more than 11,000 teachers have received Huawei ICT Academy certification and gone on to serve as pillars in their own growing practice-oriented training systems. In new tech domains, we are also actively exploring new teaching and research methods. For example, we are working with a consortium of universities in China, led by Wuhan University of Technology, to build a multi-site, virtual MindSpore teaching and research team for deep learning. The team has already made great strides in developing a new slew of teachers that will drive innovation in the field of AI.
The Huawei ICT Academy is now moving into a new chapter, as we aim to provide 10,000 new training opportunities for teachers each year and certify at least 20,000 teachers.
Third, we are focusing on building up cross-domain talent.
Cross-domain knowledge and skills are becoming increasingly critical as digital and intelligent transformation changes the world around us. We aim to integrate ICT with a number of traditional and interdisciplinary subjects such as machinery, transportation, biology, and medicine. By embedding ICT into the curriculum of more majors, we can cultivate a new generation of interdisciplinary talent with more diverse skillsets.
Chen Yucheng is a prime example of such interdisciplinary talent. He studied Ascend AI software through an industry-education collaboration project at the Huawei ICT Academy during his undergraduate communications program while at Dalian Minzu University. After graduation in 2024, his multi-disciplinary experience helped him successfully apply to Tsinghua University's Peking Union Medical College, where he is currently pursuing a graduate degree in the application of AI in biomedical engineering.
There are many more examples like Chen. Industry-education collaboration will remain a key driver of talent cultivation, and so we will continue working hard to nurture millions of developers for the broader ecosystem. By integrating science, technology, and education, we can bring the global talent ecosystem to new heights.
Talent is where true accomplishment and prosperity lie. So, we must look to the future, and work hand in hand with universities, partners, and ecosystem players to create an open and innovative approach to education based on real-world practice in order to cultivate more cross-domain and interdisciplinary talent. Talent is an inexhaustible source of momentum for corporate innovation and development. Only by investing in talent can we drive comprehensive industry upgrade and sustainable development of society.
