Recently, the China National Committee on Education, Science, Culture, Health, and Sports released a list of 20 individuals for the inaugural "National Science and Innovation Master" selection campaign, and our college's Professor and Ph.D. supervisor, Wei Zhen, has been honorably selected. Giving wings to railways with artificial intelligence and contributing to the nation's self-reliance in science and technology is not only Wei Zhen's ideal but also the dream of an intelligent manufacturing powerhouse he has devoted his life to.

Wei Zhen, a professor and Ph.D. supervisor at the School of Computer and Information Science (School of Artificial Intelligence), enjoys a state council special allowance. He is the chairman and founder of Hefei Gaoke Information Technology Co., Ltd. He has held several key positions in national and provincial innovation platforms, including director of the National/Provincial Joint Engineering Research Center and Key Laboratory. Wei Zhen also serves as the vice-chairman of the Expert Group on Metallurgical Railway Transportation for the Chinese Steel Industry, a member of the Communication Equipment Subcommittee of the Special Equipment Standardization Technical Committee for the Chinese Coal Industry, and a member of the Professional Committee on Coal Mine Automation of the China Coal Society.

For many years, Wei Zhen has adhered to innovation and entrepreneurship. Facing the bottleneck problems of safety and efficiency contradictions in industrial railway signal control and intelligent dispatching in China, he led his team to overcome difficulties and preside over multiple central national science and technology projects such as the National 863 Program and the National Key R&D Program. He led the completion of several primary technical equipment research and development projects, achieved multiple key core technology breakthroughs in the industry, and realized the large-scale industrialization of achievements, making outstanding contributions to the industry's technological progress.

To solve the critical "bottleneck" problems in the fields of railway signal control and, intelligent dispatching, and intelligent mine construction, Wei Zhen led his team to successfully develop the first domestic enterprise railway intelligent transportation dispatch comprehensive information platform, completely changing the manual management mode relied upon by China's industrial railway transportation dispatching. The achievement won the National Science and Technology Progress Second Prize.

In 2011, Wei Zhen led his team to devote themselves to the development of the latest generation of all-electronic computer interlocking systems, proposing and designing for the first time in China a new type of cross-redundant dual-computer dual-vote system structure. This achievement became the first system-level full-electronic computer interlocking system in China to pass the international highest safety integrity level SIL4 certification. The overall technology reached the international leading level in the field of industrial railways, achieving import substitution, winning the Anhui Province Science and Technology Progress First Prize in 2020, and was successfully promoted and applied in nearly a hundred large enterprises in metallurgy, petrochemicals, ports, etc., both domestically and along the "Belt and Road" countries, with more than 2000 application sites.

In recent years, following the national trend of intelligent mine construction, Wei Zhen has devoted himself to the application research of new technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, and the industrial internet mine safety. The team successfully developed the first domestic unmanned driving system that truly realizes obstacle recognition and autonomous safety protection under low illumination scenarios in coal mine roadways, solving vital technical problems such as real-time recognition, detection, and collision warning protection of dynamic obstacle targets under low illumination environments in coal mines. It was selected as the first batch of major technical equipment in the energy field by the National Energy Administration, making a positive contribution to promoting the "mechanization replacing people, automation reducing people, intelligence unattended" intelligent mine construction in China's mining energy industry.

As a professor and Ph.D. supervisor at Hefei University of Technology, besides his busy research and management work, Wei Zhen also trained master's and doctoral students. In the process of guiding students, Wei Zhen makes full use of nearly 10 national and provincial-level technology innovation platform resources creat by Gaoke Technology Co., Ltd., leveraging the collaborative innovation advantages of industry, academia, research, and application between enterprises and universities to build a high-quality exercise platform for the growth of young students. His spirit of adhering to the industrial country and bravely climbing the peak of science and technology has set the best example for students.

Scientific innovation never stops, and craftsmanship continues forever. Leading by example and cultivating talents, facing the needs of serving the country's major strategies and developing new productive forces, Wei Zhen will lead his team to further increase the R&D efforts in artificial intelligence, advanced complex control technologies, etc., in the field of railway transportation "intelligence, unmanned," aiming to become the pioneer and leader of industry technology, making railways and mines safer, more efficient, and smarter, contributing the strength of Hefei University of Technology to the self-reliance and self-improvement of national science and technology.