Chinese search giant Baidu has hired Andrew Ng, a noted artificial intelligence researcher and co-founder of online education startup Coursera, to be its chief scientist, according to the company's announcement on May 16. Ng will help to build out a new artificial-intelligence research lab that Baidu has opened in Silicon Valley.

Ng works on deep learning as an associate professor at Stanford and created the Google Brain team, which is most famous for creating a program that allowed computers to learn to identify cats in videos.

Ng started Coursera, which offers university courses online, in 2012. He said that he will continue to be Coursera's chairman and "remain deeply involved in company strategy."

The 38-year-old Chinese American scientist grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore and received his PhD from University of California, Berkeley, in 2002.