Dr. En-hui Yang (Information Theory and Multi-media Compression)
Dr. En-hui Yang (University of Waterloo)
Dr. En-hui Yang is internationally renowned for his innovative and prolific research, writing andmentoring in the field of Information Theory and Multimedia Compression. His pioneering and continuing contributions in his areas of research have impacted our everyday lives with the commercial application of his work.
Educational Background
B.S., Applied Mathematics, HuaQQiao University, 1986.
Ph. D., Applied Mathematics, Nankai University, 1991.
Ph. D., Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1996.
Major Contributions
Dr. Yang is currently a Canada Research Chair in Information Theory and Multi-media Compression and teaches in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
His research interests range from multimedia compression, information theory, digital communications, source and channel coding, image and video coding, image understanding and management, big data analytics, to information security. He has exemplified research excellence in both theory and practice, and has made profound contributions to information and communications technologies by introducing fundamental source coding theory; solving long-standing open problems in his field; inventing state-of-the-art lossless and lossy compression algorithms for encoding text (such as web pages and emails), images, and video; designing cutting-edge systems to provide a new form of secure communications, to solve several hard core security issues (data security, cloud storage security, and malicious insider attack) through an inventive concept of quarantined security, and to manage automatically and intelligently large sets of photos over the cloud; and transforming his theoretic results and algorithmic inventions into practice. With over 210 papers and more than 200 patents/patent applications worldwide, his research work has had an impact on the daily life of billions of people over 170 countries through commercialized products, video coding open sources, and video coding standards. For example, his image and video coding algorithms and ideas are inside all communications and computing devices powered by Android 4.0 or higher, the number of which alone is in billions, not to mention other applications of his research results.
Dr. Yang is the founding director of the Leitch-University of Waterloo multimedia communications lab, and a co-founder of SlipStream Data Inc. (now a subsidiary of BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion)). He currently also serves as an Executive Council Member of China Overseas Exchange Association and an Overseas Advisor for the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the City of Shanghai, and serves on the Overseas Expert Advisory Committee for the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council of China and on a Review Panel for the International Council for Science.
He has served, among many other roles, as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory; a general co-chair of the 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, the largest premier international conference on information theory in the world; a technical program vice-chair of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME); the chair of the award committee for the 2004 Canadian Award in Telecommunications; a co-editor of the 2004 Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory; a co-chair of the 2003 US National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop on the interface of Information Theory and Computer Science, the purpose of which is to advise NSF about research directions and support in the interface area; and a co-chair of the 2003 Canadian Workshop on Information Theory.
Dr. Yang is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada).