2021 WAIC Privacy Computing Academic Exchange – Overview and Schedule

The 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) will be held in Shanghai from July 7‑10, continuing the "Intelligent Connected World" concept with the theme "Collective Intelligence City" to promote global AI innovation, technology, applications, talent, and capital.

On the afternoon of July 8, the "2021 WAIC · Privacy Computing Academic Exchange"—co‑organized by Ant Group, Machine Heart, and the CCF YOCSEF Shanghai Academic Committee—will take place in Conference Room 2 of the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition Center.

The program committee chair, Associate Professor Jiang Li from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, will deliver an opening speech, and the conference chair, IEEE Fellow and Ant Group Senior Vice President Zhou Jing‑ren, will give a keynote address.

The exchange features three core modules: a Keynote session, a discussion ("Thinking") session, and paper sharing, plus an open‑area poster exhibition where leading experts and authors will discuss cutting‑edge topics such as secure multi‑party computation, data security, federated learning, and differential privacy.

As data volumes explode worldwide, the resulting privacy and security challenges demand solutions; privacy‑preserving technologies like federated learning and secure multi‑party computation enable data collaboration while protecting confidentiality, and have already been applied in finance, healthcare, and are expanding to transportation, education, and industry.

Nevertheless, challenges remain in hardware cost, computational power, and breaking data silos; the 2021 WAIC · Privacy Computing Academic Exchange aims to bring academia and industry together to explore new technologies, applications, and future trends.

Keynote speakers include IEEE Fellow and Ant Group Senior Vice President Zhou Jing‑ren, Zhejiang University Professor Ren Kui (ACM/IEEE Fellow), BaseBit.ai Chief Scientist Zhang Lintao, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Professor Yu Yu, who will each present perspectives on practical and innovative privacy computing.

In the discussion segment, experts such as Fu Shuke (Vice President of Fudan University’s Secure Computing Center), Professor Han Weili (Fudan University), Hou Rui (Deputy Director of the National Key Laboratory of Information Security), Ant Group’s Wang Lei, Yao Ming (Founder of Dongjian Technology), and Professor Yu Yu will debate "Data Openness".

The event also invites high‑quality papers on secure multi‑party computation, federated learning, and differential privacy for both on‑stage paper presentations and poster displays; authors can showcase their research to WAIC attendees and learn about industry innovations.

Details of the schedule and registration are provided via the QR code below; the deadline for paper and poster submissions is June 25, 2021.