Andrew Chi-ChihYao
Turing Award Winner, Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua
The Chair of the Academic Committee of I-AIIG
Professor Yao received a doctorate degree in Physics from Harvard University, and another one in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. Heserved on the faculty of MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley and Princeton University. As apioneer in cryptography and quantum computing, he received the Turing Award in 2000 and is the first Chinese scientist receiving this highest honor in computer science. He left Princeton University in 2004 to join Tsinghua University. At Tsinghua, Professor Yao founded an elite undergraduate CS program (the “Yao Class”) in 2005, praised by some as the best undergraduate CS program in the world. He founded IIIS (Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences) in 2011 and built it into a first-rate interdisciplinary research center, including a cutting-edge quantum computing laboratory. In the area of artificial intelligence, Professor Yao founded an elite AI program (the “Zhi Class”) in 2019, and established the Turing AI Institute (Nanjing), the Core Technology Institute (Xian) , Zhonguancun Haihua Institute, and the Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute during 2018-2020 to undertake AI-inspired fundamental research across disciplines. Professor Yao is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and foreign member of the US Academy of Sciences.
