The National & Local Joint Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Information Processing Technology for Mongolian was approved for establishment by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2019. Guided by the principles of “serving national needs, fostering distinctive development, aiming high, and pursuing sustained excellence,” the Center addresses strategic demands for AI development and the modernization of ethnic languages at both national and regional levels.

Focusing on cutting-edge research and application of intelligent information processing technologies for the Mongolian language, the Center actively expands into multilingual processing, cloud computing, big data, and multimodal systems. Its mission is to become a globally influential innovation hub and a top-tier talent training base, contributing to high-quality development in China and Inner Mongolia.

Currently, the Center hosts 31 research personnel, including 13 professors, 2 research fellows, and 9 associate professors, with 12 Ph.D. advisors. The team includes recipients of prestigious national and regional honors such as the State Council Special Government Allowance, “Grassland Talents Program,” and other high-level talent initiatives. The core R&D team, recognized as an “Innovation Talent Team” by the Autonomous Region, is marked by academic excellence, international perspective, and a dynamic, youthful profile. The Center is led by Professor Guanglai Gao.

Since its establishment, the Center has undertaken over 80 research projects, including one National Key R&D Program (intergovernmental cooperation), 31 NSFC-funded projects, and several major regional initiatives, with total research funding exceeding 55 million RMB. Its innovations in Mongolian-language AI technologies have earned national awards such as the Ministry of Education Science and Technology Progress Award (Second Prize), the China Computer Federation Outstanding Progress Award, and the Golden Bridge Award. Over 200 academic papers have been published, including more than 100 in top-tier venues like TASLP, TMM, TAC, IJDAR, ACL, AAAI, SIGIR, IJCAI, ICASSP, NAACL, COLING, and ICDAR. The Center also holds 13 invention patents.

In response to President Xi Jinping’s remarks during his 2019 visit to Inner Mongolia University—emphasizing the preservation and utilization of ancient Mongolian manuscripts—the Center launched the digitization of Mongolian ancient texts and led the regional infrastructure project “Digitalization of Mongolian Ancient Manuscripts.” This work lays a solid foundation for preserving cultural heritage and promoting national unity.

Professor Gao is a member of the 8th Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Education, Vice Chair of the CAAI Committee on Multilingual Intelligent Information Processing, and Vice Chair of the Committee on Modernization of Ethnic Languages under the Chinese Language Modernization Society. His accolades include the Fok Ying Tung Young Teachers Award (1998), recognition as an Outstanding Expert of Inner Mongolia (2000), and the State Council Special Government Allowance (2009). In 2024, he was honored with the Special Contribution Award in NLP by the China Computer Federation.

His research areas include artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, and Mongolian language processing. He has led or co-led multiple national-level projects, including the 863 Program, 973 Program (pre-study), and National Key R&D Programs. He pioneered several first-in-China systems such as printed Mongolian OCR, large-vocabulary Mongolian speech recognition, and Mongolian information retrieval. His work has earned numerous scientific awards and over 50 publications in top international venues.