Alibaba founder Jack Ma joins University of Tokyo as visiting professor; Check details
Alibaba Group’s founder, Jack Ma, is now a visiting professor at a new Tokyo college. He will be teaching students in various areas such as advising on important research themes and more.
FollowJack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, is now a professor at a new Tokyo institution. The billionaire appears to be ready to resume public life after vanishing for a while as Beijing cracked down on internet entrepreneurs in late 2020. The billionaire, however, has not taken up a full-time teaching position and has just accepted the offer of a visiting lecturer at the institution.
His contract with the college runs through the end of October 2023, although he can opt to renew it on an annual basis. Ma has enrolled in a college administered by the University of Tokyo, which was formed in 2019. This college was purportedly established to serve as a point of contact between the University of Tokyo and foreign researchers and research institutes.
He will be educating students at the institution in a variety of areas, including advising on major research subjects and giving lectures on management and business start-ups. In his new role, Ma is expected to conduct research on sustainable agriculture and food production, Tokyo College said in an announcement on Monday.
Ma's term as a visiting professor starts on May 1. It marks the 58-year-old's return to teaching after his retirement from Alibaba in September 2019. The billionaire was an English teacher for several years before co-founding Alibaba.
Ma has been in the spotlight since March, when he returned to the school he built in his hometown of Hangzhou, in east China. He was named an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong in April. According to the media reports, Ma's recent action is one of his few public pledges made outside of China. The millionaire vanished from China in late 2021 and was subsequently seen in Australia, Japan, and Thailand.
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