PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Mingkui Tan

Also known as Minkui Tan, Tan Mingkui, 谭明奎

Mingkui Tan is an AI researcher whose work spans high-dimensional feature selection, test-time adaptation and efficient long-context language models. He earned engineering degrees at Hunan University, completed a computer science PhD at Nanyang Technological University, and worked on computer vision at Adelaide. At SCUT, he established the Machine Intelligence Laboratory in 2016; his research includes an adaptive feature-generation method for ultrahigh-dimensional data, calibrated test-time adaptation, and Latent-Condensed Attention for efficient long-context modeling. As of October 2026, he is a professor at SCUT's School of Software Engineering.

Timeline

  1. 2006–2009

    Degrees at Hunan University

    At Hunan University, he earns a bachelor's degree in environmental science and engineering in 2006 and a master's degree in control science and engineering in 2009.

  2. 2014

    A computer science PhD

    He completes a PhD in computer science at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in 2014.

  3. 2014

    Feature selection for big data

    In 2014, he and Ivor W. Tsang and Li Wang publish an adaptive feature-scaling scheme for ultrahigh-dimensional feature selection. Its feature-generating method activates groups of features and solves multiple-kernel-learning subproblems.

  4. 2014–2016

    Computer vision at Adelaide

    From 2014 to 2016, he works as a Senior Research Associate on computer vision in the University of Adelaide's School of Computer Science.

  5. 2016

    Establishing the SMIL lab

    In 2016, he establishes South China University of Technology's Machine Intelligence Laboratory (SMIL). The group works on machine learning, computer vision and quantization.

  6. 2024

    Test-time adaptation with calibration

    In 2024, he and six collaborators propose EATA with Calibration (EATA-C) for test-time adaptation. The method separates reducible model uncertainty from inherent data uncertainty to calibrate predictions.

  7. 2026

    Latent-Condensed Attention for long contexts

    In 2026, he coauthors Latent-Condensed Transformer for Efficient Long Context Modeling. Latent-Condensed Attention compresses semantic and positional information in latent space to reduce computation and key-value cache use.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at SCUT

    As of October 2026, he is a professor with the School of Software Engineering at South China University of Technology.

Career

  1. Since 2016South China University of TechnologyFounder, Professor
  2. 2014–2016University of AdelaideSenior Research Associate

Education

  1. 2014Nanyang Technological UniversityPhD
  2. 2009Hunan UniversityMaster's degree
  3. 2006Hunan UniversityBachelor's degree

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes South China University of Technology. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes South China University of Technology. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. 5 of the 25 people with the most-cited recent papers also lead on career citationsIncludes South China University of Technology. We compare citations to 2023–2025 papers with career citations and h-index, after correcting reviewed publication-date errors: who leads, when they started and where they work.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes South China University of Technology. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Mingkui Tan yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. About me - Mingkui Tan’s Homepage tanmingkui.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Towards Ultrahigh Dimensional Feature Selection for Big Data jmlr.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Mingkui Tan's Homepage tanmingkui.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Uncertainty-Calibrated Test-Time Model Adaptation without Forgetting arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Latent-Condensed Transformer for Efficient Long Context Modeling aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.