Liu Shan sits in her office. (Photo provided by Tencent Media Lab)
BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Dressed in geek chic in front of a camera in her California office, Liu Shan, a distinguished scientist of Chinese internet giant Tencent, is holding a livestreamed meeting with her colleagues in China.
During an interview with Xinhua, the words technology, standard, immersion and compression were uttered most frequently by the general manager of Tencent Media Lab.
It is Liu's hope that Chinese internet companies could make greater contribution to the development of core technical standards.
Her team contributed to the development of the new generation of international video codec standards H.266/VVC and submitted hundreds of technical proposals to the standards.
More than 100 of their proposals have been adopted.
"The new generation of video codec standards has doubled the compression efficiency, which means that we need half of the bandwidth for the same picture quality," said Liu.
Looking back on her research journey, Liu thinks her curiosity toward the sciences came from the way that her parents raised her. "My dad would tell me how Newton discovered the law of gravity when I ate an apple."
Since middle school, Liu has shown outstanding performance in mathematics and physics. Later, she obtained her bachelor's degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, and her master's and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California.
Liu played an important role in the development and application of several of Tencent's key products. She is also the inventor of more than 200 U.S. and global patent applications and the author of more than 60 journal and conference articles.
At present, she spends 40 percent of her time in China, 40 percent in the United States, and the rest around the world. She manages a team that speaks eight languages.
In the future, her research will cover virtual reality (VR), according to her colleague Zhang Yihan.
The commercialization of VR previously faced many challenges, Liu said. But she still believes that the cutting-edge media technology will boom again in the era of 5G.
"I'm not an extremely smart person," said Liu, "but I work really hard since I believe that success originates from diligence, and diligence from love."
Research requires long hours, and is full of uncertainty and sometimes can be dull, she said. "Without love, it is easy to give up." ■
