Chi-chih Yao

Biography

"Education background National Taiwan University, B.S., Physics, 1967. Harvard University, A.M., Physics, 1969, Ph.D., Physics, 1972. University of Illinois, Ph.D., Computer Science, 1975. Experience September 1975 to August 1976 Assistant Professor, Mathematics Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology September 1976 to August 1981 Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, Stanford University September 1981 to September 1982 Professor, Computer Science Division, University of California, Berkeley October 1982 to June 1986 Professor, Computer Science Department, Stanford University July 1986 to June 2004 William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University September 2004 to present Professor, Center for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University January 2005 to present Distinguished Professor-At-Large, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Research Status Research interests include theory of computation and its application in cryptography and quantum computing. Research contributions in three ways: (1) creating important subfields for theoretical computer science, namely communication complexity and pseudorandom number generation; (2) helping lay the foundations of modern cryptography; and (3) resolving open problems and establishing new paradigms in circuit complexity, computational geometry, data structures, and quantum computing. As a leading scientist in network communication complexity theory, Prof. Yao first developed the quantum communication complexity in 1993, which has laid the theoretical foundations for quantum computer. He developed the distributed quantum computation model in 1995, which has evolved into the basics of distributed quantum algorithms and quantum communication protocol security. Prof. Yao was awarded the A.M. Turing Award in 2000 for his contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity. He is the first Asian laureate of the Turing Award since its establishment and the only Chinese laureate so far. The Turing Award is recognized as the “highest distinction in Computer Science” and the “Nobel Prize of computing”. Honors And Awards 1987 George Polya Prize 1991 Guggenheim Fellowship 1995 Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery 1996 Donald E. Knuth Prize 1998 Member, US National Academy of Sciences 2000 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2000 A.M. Turing Award 2000 Member, Academia Sinica 2003 Pan Wen-Yuan Research Award 2003 Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa, City University of Hong Kong 2003 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science 2004 Doctor of Engineering, Honoris Causa, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 2004 Foreign Member, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2004 Alumni Award for Distinguished Service, College of Engineering, University of Illinois 2006 Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa, the Chinese University of Hong Kong 2009 Doctor of Mathematics, Honoris Causa, University of Waterloo 2010 International Association for Cryptologic Research Fellow (IACR)"

Research Interest

Analysis of Algorithms, Computational Complexity, Communication Complexity,Cryptographic Protocols,Quantum Computing