# Former DeepMind Director Joins Hong Kong Polytechnic University > Source: > Published: 2026-07-09 02:30:34+00:00 PolyU appointed **Cao Liangliang** as chair professor of data science and AI effective **June 29, 2026**, after senior research roles at **Google DeepMind**, Google, Apple and OPPO, according to PolyU and SCMP. The move matters for practitioners because Cao's production background spans `Gemini`, Project Astra, Google Cloud Vision, Google Speech and Apple Intelligence, giving PolyU a faculty leader with experience across cloud, on-device and multimodal AI systems. Cao's personal site says he returned to Hong Kong after two decades in the United States, framing the hire as a bridge between MMLab-trained academic research and frontier-model product engineering. The practical signal is not a new model release, but a talent move that can influence applied research, graduate training and industry collaboration in Hong Kong.