From November 17 to 19, the 7th IEEE International Conference on Network Intelligence and Digital Content (IEEE IC-NIDC 2021), jointly hosted by the IEEE Beijing Section, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Hanyang University in Korea, University of Surrey in the UK, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Aalborg University in Denmark, was successfully held in Beijing in a hybrid online and offline format.

The conference was co-chaired by Professor Guo Jun, former Vice President of BUPT, Professor Zhang Lin, former Vice President of Beijing Information Science and Technology University, Professor Nei Kato of Tohoku University in Japan, and Professor Joon-Hyuk Chang of Hanyang University in Korea. Professor Yang Jie from the School of Artificial Intelligence at BUPT served as the program committee chair.

The theme of this year's conference was "AI & ICT Enabling Shared Understanding." The conference attracted over 150 experts and scholars from various countries and regions, including China, Korea, Japan, Germany, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Hong Kong. They gave presentations, held discussions, and exchanged ideas on a variety of topics, such as artificial intelligence, information and communication technology, social networks, and media mining. The conference received over 200 paper submissions from domestic and international participants, and after rigorous review, 99 papers were accepted and published by IEEE.

 Professors Rainer Martin from Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, Minoru Etoh from Osaka University in Japan, and Sung Ho Cho from Hanyang University in Korea delivered keynote speeches, which were warmly welcomed by the attendees.