Professor Andrew C. Yao, Distinguished Professor-at-Large of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, was conferred honorary doctorate by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University at its 20th Congregation on 25 October 2014.
Professor Yao is a renowned computer scientist and educator of pre-eminent international standing, and also the first Chinese scientist to receive the prestigious Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery, the highest honour in computer science. A world-leading computer scientist, Professor Yao has received numerous honours and awards. Before the Turing Award, he had won two prestigious awards: the George Polya Prize and the first Donald E. Knuth Prize. Professor Yao is a member of the US Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Academia Sinica in Taipei. He was elected a foreign fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Professor Yao was born in Shanghai, China. He completed his undergraduate education in physics at Taiwan University and furthered his studies at Harvard University. After he was awarded a PhD degree in physics from Harvard University in 1972, he decided to switch to computer science, foreseeing the unprecedented changes that computer science would bring to the global community. In 1975, he received his second PhD, in computer science, from the University of Illinois. After teaching and researching at MIT (1975-1976), Stanford University (1976-1981, 1982-1986) and UC Berkeley (1981-1982), he joined Princeton University in 1986 as the William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science. He is currently the Director of Institute of Theoretical Computer Science and Communications, CUHK | |
