(Yicai Global) Nov. 25 -- Huawei Technologies is advancing technological development with the help of young scientists hired through the Chinese tech giant’s Genius Youth Project.

One team led by Dr. Zhong Zhao, who joined Huawei through the program in 2019, realized the first large-scale commercial use of Automated Machine Learning within a year, according to an internal publication of the Shenzhen-based company.

Zhong’s first task at Huawei was to study how to enable the firm’s smartphone camera to take better photos than a single-lens reflex camera based on an AutoML algorithm, Huawei revealed in its in-house journal recently. The then 28-year-old Zhong and his team made the breakthrough within 12 months.

Huawei launched the Genius Youth Project in 2019. The so-called ‘genius teenagers’ the program seeks to recruit are fresh PhD graduates aged 25 to 30, a period when they are at their peak physically, mentally and creatively, according to Tian Qi, chief artificial intelligence scientist at Huawei’s cloud business unit.

Huawei has three salary levels for these ‘gifted teenagers’ -- CNY896,000 to CNY1 million (USD140,240 to USD156,520), CNY1.4 million to CNY1.6 million and CNY1.8 million to CNY2 million. Zhong is one of the most senior.

Huawei has hired at least 700 mathematicians, more than 800 physicists, 120-plus chemists, 15,000 basic researchers and about 60,000 product research and development staff, according to public information.

In addition, the tech titan has partnered with more than 300 universities and over 900 research institutes and companies worldwide. It has implemented 7,840 projects, invested USD1.8 billion and signed over 1,000 paid R&D contracts.

Editors: Liao Shumin, Peter Thomas