China forges ahead as a computer science power
- By Lu Rucai
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E-mail China Today, July 17, 2017
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Dr. Yao shows visitors his quantum computer lab. [Photo/China Today] |
He is the sole Chinese ever to win the A.M. Turing Award, regarded as the Nobel Prize of Computing. He has also been elected a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This is the man who in 2004 quit his tenure at Princeton University and joined Tsinghua University. The next year he established a trial computer science class at this prestigious Chinese university. In 2011 he established the Tsinghua Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, China's first, and the Center for Quantum Information. And in 2014 he renounced his U.S. nationality, and became a full member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, dean of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University, personifies the very best of Chinese scientists; those committed to the motherland's sci & tech research and education.
Distinguished career
Dr. Yao was born in Shanghai in 1946, and moved to Taiwan with his parents at an early age. After graduating from university there, he went to the U.S. for further study. He received his PhD in physics at Harvard University in 1972, and a PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois in 1975. From 1975 to 2004 Dr. Yao taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University.
Dr. Yao's study spans computer science and quantum information. His complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity has had lasting impact on the very foundations of modern cryptography, computer security, computational complexity, and randomized computation. His theory won him the A.M. Turing Award in 2000, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science. Notwithstanding his success in the U.S., Dr. Yao left his teaching job at Princeton in June 2004, and accepted an offer from China's Tsinghua University, a decision that confounded many people. "To cultivate talents in China, and to make breakthroughs at the sci & tech forefront in this country have an entirely different significance for me," he explained.
Inauguration of "Yao's class"
In 2004, China's computer science sector was well behind that of developed countries. Dr. Yao believed that enhancing undergraduate education and cultivating world-level professionals for future higher sci & tech research was the first step towards changing this situation.
In 2005 Tsinghua opened a trial software science (later changed to computer science) class through a partnership with Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) whose students were enrolled from freshmen and sophomores of various majors. As mastermind of this course, Dr. Yao personally designed and periodically updated the curriculum of the later dubbed Yao's Class. His aim was to create a challenging program that would help its students to discover their true interests and strengths. In a letter to all Tsinghua students of March 2006 Dr. Yao wrote: "Our goal is not to produce software developers and programmers, but the world's best computer professionals."
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