Dr. Andrew Yao to Speak at UTD on the "Enjoyment of Computational Theories"

Dr. Andrew Yao, who in 2000 was awarded the prestigious A.M. Turing Award “in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation,” will present a lecture entitled “The Enjoyment of Computational Theories” on Thursday, March 28, at 1:30 p.m. in the Conference Center on the campus of The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD).

This event is free and open to the public.

“It is a great honor to have a world-class scientist such as Andrew Yao visit UTD,” said Dr. Da Hsuan Feng, vice president for research and graduate education at the university. “With UTD’s interest, expertise and rapid growth in computer science, engineering and the applied sciences, I believe his lecture has the potential to have great impact.”

Yao, currently the William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Academia Sinica. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the SIAM George Polya Prize and the ACM SIGACT-IEEE TCMFCS Donald E. Knuth Prize.

Prior to joining Princeton, Yao taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. He received his undergraduate degree from the National Taiwan University and his Ph.D. degree in physics from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois. Yao’s research activities are in the design of efficient computer algorithms and complexity theories in emerging new areas of theoretical computer science, such as quantum communication and computing. He is investigating new paradigms for designing fast quantum algorithms and mathematical tools for the security analysis of quantum cryptographic protocols.

The A.M. Turing Award is presented annually by ACM. It is given to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community, and the contributions must be of lasting and major technical importance. A.M. Turing is considered the founder of computer science.