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Andrew Yao

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In this Chinese name, the family name is Yao.
Andrew Chi-Chih Yao
姚期智
Born (1946-12-24) December 24, 1946 (age 77)
Shanghai, China
Citizenship
Alma materNational Taiwan University
Harvard University
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Known forYao's Principle
SpouseFrances Yao
AwardsPólya Prize (SIAM) (1987)
Knuth Prize (1996)
Turing Award (2000)
Kyoto Prize (2021)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
InstitutionsStanford University
University of California, Berkeley
Princeton University
Tsinghua University
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Chinese name
Chinese姚期智
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinYáo Qīzhì
Wade–GilesYao2 Ch'i1chih4

Andrew Chi-Chih Yao (Chinese: 姚期智; pinyin: Yáo Qīzhì; born December 24, 1946) is a Chinese computer scientist and computational theorist. He is currently a professor and the dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) at Tsinghua University. Yao used the minimax theorem to prove what is now known as Yao's Principle.

After graduating from National Taiwan University, Yao earned two PhDs from Harvard University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, respectively.

Yao was a naturalized U.S. citizen, and worked for many years in the U.S. In 2015, together with Yang Chen-Ning, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and became an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.[1][2][3][4]

Early life and education

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Yao was born in Shanghai, China. He completed his undergraduate education in physics at the National Taiwan University, before completing a Doctor of Philosophy in physics at Harvard University in 1972, and then a second PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1975.

Academic career

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Yao was an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975–1976), assistant professor at Stanford University (1976–1981), and professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1981–1982).[5] From 1982 to 1986, he was a full professor at Stanford University.[6] From 1986 to 2004, Yao was the William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University,[7] where he continued to work on algorithms and complexity. In 2004, Yao became a professor of the Center for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University (CASTU) and the director of the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS), Tsinghua University in Beijing. Since 2010, he has served as the Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) in Tsinghua University. In 2010, he initiated the Conference on Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS). Yao is also the Distinguished Professor-at-Large in the Chinese University of Hong Kong.[8]

In May 2024, Yao joined fellow AI researchers Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and others in publishing an expert consensus paper describing the extreme risks posed by AI. The authors warned that AI safety research is lagging, and outlined "proactive, adaptive governance mechanisms" for policymakers ahead of the AI Seoul Summit.[9][10]

Awards

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In 1996, Yao was awarded the Knuth Prize. Yao also received the Turing Award in 2000, considered the "Nobel Prize" of computer science[11], "in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity".[5] In 2021, Yao received the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology.[12]

Yao is a member of U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery,[13] and an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences. His wife, Frances Yao, is also a theoretical computer scientist.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen To Expatriate, as Required by Section 6039G". Federal Register. 2015-10-27. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
  2. ^ "杨振宁、姚期智正式转为中国科学院院士". Xinhua News.
  3. ^ "Scientists drop U.S. citizenship", Science, 355 (6328): 891, March 3, 2017, doi:10.1126/science.355.6328.890, PMID 28254889
  4. ^ McLaughlin, Kathleen (24 February 2017). "Two top Chinese-American scientists have dropped their U.S. citizenship". Science. doi:10.1126/science.aal0823. CAS released a statement confirming the news but offered no further explanation as to why the two had given up their U.S. citizenship.
  5. ^ a b "Andrew C Yao – A.M. Turing Award Winner". amturing.acm.org. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
  6. ^ "YaoTree". infolab.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
  7. ^ "Andrew Yao". www.cs.princeton.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-08-08. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
  8. ^ "ITCSC People". www.itcsc.cuhk.edu.hk. Archived from the original on 2016-10-08. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
  9. ^ "World leaders still need to wake up to AI risks, say leading experts ahead of AI Safety Summit | University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-10-21.
  10. ^ Bengio, Yoshua; Hinton, Geoffrey; Yao, Andrew; Song, Dawn; Abbeel, Pieter; Darrell, Trevor; Harari, Yuval Noah; Zhang, Ya-Qin; Xue, Lan; Shalev-Shwartz, Shai; Hadfield, Gillian; Clune, Jeff; Maharaj, Tegan; Hutter, Frank; Baydin, Atılım Güneş (2024-05-24). "Managing extreme AI risks amid rapid progress". Science. 384 (6698): 842–845. arXiv:2310.17688. doi:10.1126/science.adn0117. ISSN 0036-8075.
  11. ^ ""Turing Award"".
  12. ^ Kyoto Prize 2021
  13. ^ "ACM Fellows–1995". acm.org. Retrieved 10 March 2015.
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