Recently, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) website released the information of the 2020 IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award. Yao Xin, professor and department chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology, and alumnus of School of the Gifted Young at the University of Science and Technology of China (enrolled in ’77), was announced as the winner, honoring his outstanding contribution in the field of computational intelligence. Prof. Yao is the also first Chinese to be honored with the award.

Screenshot of award winning website

Xin Yao’s award is the result of many years of work on computational intelligence, and the research ideas that he has proposed have been applied to the study of neural network structure, optimal path planning, design of digital filters, and the design of new materials. He has also put forth a new methodology to theoretically analyzed evolutionary algorithms. He has proposed a novel optimization method based on random sequencing, which can be used to solve the problem of balancing objective and penalty functions in evolutionary optimizations. This method is of great significance for solving optimization problems across a wide range of engineering and scientific disciplines, ranging from aeronautics to biology to economics.

Founded in 2004, the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award is technology award in honor of Frank Rosenblatt, one of the founders of neural networks. Each year, the award honors a single individual who has made globally outstanding outstanding contributions to biologically and linguistically motivated computational paradigms and systems.

Prof. Yao Xin

Xin Yao (SGY ‘77), received his Bachelor's degree from USTC in 1982, his Master's degree from the North China Institute of Computing Technology in Beijing in 1985 and his Doctoral degree from USTC in 1990. From 1990 to 1992 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the department of Architecture, Construction and Engineering at the Australian National University and the Australian CSIRO; He has been a lecturer, senior lecturer and associate professor at the University of New South Wales (Australian Defence Force Academy) from 1992 to 1999. From 1999 to 2016, he was the director and Chair Professor of the Centre of Excellence for Computational Intelligence and Applications at University of Birmingham, UK. His main research areas include evolutionary computing, intelligent optimization, machine learning.

Xin Yao was chairman of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (2014-2015). He was editor of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation from 2003 to 2008. To date, he has published more than 800 papers in top international academic journals and conferences, with a total citation count of over 49,000 and an H-index of 99. He won the IEEE Donald G. Fink Paper Award and the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks Outstanding Paper Award (each awarded to only one paper each year). He is now an selectee of one of the Ministry of Education’s major talent programs and an IEEE Fellow.

(translated by Wu Zihan)