En-Hui Yang

Dr. En-Hui Yang is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo and the founding Director of the Leitch-University of Waterloo Multimedia Communications Lab. He is also the co-founder of SlipStream Data Inc. (now a subsidiary of BlackBerry Inc., formerly known as Research In Motion) and a former associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Dr. Yang previously held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Information Theory and Multimedia Data Compression.

Dr. Yang is known for co-developing the Yang-Kieffer algorithm, a numerical set of rules that use grammar-based coding to achieve lossless compression of text and image files. He is also the co-inventor of soft decision quantization (rate distortion optimization quantization or trellis quantization), an efficient coding technology used in image and video applications to improve compression, with widespread use in products like smartphones and web browsers.

His research interests span multimedia compression, information theory, digital communications, image and video coding, image understanding and management, big data analytics, information security, and deep learning. His work aims to develop technologies that enhance storage capacity of computers, accelerate and improve reliability of data transmission, improve data security, and make big data more understandable.

Dr. Yang is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2024, he was honored with the title of 'University Professor' by the University of Waterloo in recognition of his exceptional scholarly achievements and international pre-eminence.

• Multimedia Data Compression

• Coding & Modulation

• Information Theory

• Digital Communications

• Description Complexity Theory

• Communication & Information Systems

• Source & Channel Coding

• Image & Video Coding

• Multimedia Communications

• Data Analytics

• Information Security

• Deep Learning

• 1996, Doctorate Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, United States

• 1991, Doctorate Probability and Statistics, Nankai University, China

• 1986, Bachelor's Applied Mathematics, HuaQiao University, China

• 2000, Ontario Premier's Research Excellence Award, For research contributions to information theory and multimedia compression.

• 2001, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2), Information Theory and Multimedia Compression

• 2002, Ontario Distinguished Researcher Award

• 2004, Outstanding Performance Award, University of Waterloo

• 2006, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2), Information Theory and Multimedia Compression

• 2010, Canada Research Chair (Tier 1), Information Theory and its Applications

• 2009, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, En-Hui Yang is an international leader in source coding, a branch of information theory dealing with how to efficiently encode information for transmission, storage, and processing. A recipient of many awards including the 2007 Ernest C. Manning Award of Distinction and an IEEE Fellow, he has made profound contributions to communication engineering by introducing new fundamental source coding theory, solving long-standing open problems in source coding, inventing state-of-the-art lossless and lossy multimedia coding algorithms, co-founding SlipStream Data Inc., now a subsidiary of Research in Motion, and transforming his research results and coding algorithms into practice, which now impact on the daily life of tens of millions of people worldwide over 130 countries.

• 2009, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, En-Hui Yang is an international leader in source coding, a branch of information theory dealing with how to efficiently encode information for transmission, storage, and processing. A recipient of many awards including the 2007 Ernest C. Manning Award of Distinction and an IEEE Fellow, he has made profound contributions to communication engineering by introducing new fundamental source coding theory, solving long-standing open problems in source coding, inventing state-of-the-art lossless and lossy multimedia coding algorithms, co-founding SlipStream Data Inc., now a subsidiary of Research in Motion, and transforming his research results and coding algorithms into practice, which now impact on the daily life of tens of millions of people worldwide over 130 countries.

• 2007, Ernest C. Manning Award of Distinction, For Outstanding Work in Creating, Developing and Commercializing Data Compression Technology That Has Significantly Improved the Speed and Efficiency of Digital Data and Image Transfer

• 2007, Inaugural Ontario Premier's Catalyst Award, For the Development of Software for Data Acceleration

• 2008, Distinguished Performance Award, Faculty of Engineering, University of Waterloo.

• 2008, Fellow of IEEE, For Contributions to Source Coding

• 2008, Outstanding Performance Award, University of Waterloo

• 2013, CPAC Professional Achievement Award, For Outstanding Achievements in Information Theory and Related Areas.

• 2014, IEEE Information Theory Society Padovani Lecture Award, For Contributions to Research in Information Theory and Related Areas

• 2014, FCCP Education Foundation Award of Merit, For Outstanding Achievements in Information Theory and Related Areas.

• 2017, Canada Research Chair (Tier 1), Information Theory and its Applications

• 2018, Distinguished Overseas Scientist Award, the Information Theory Society of Chinese Institute of Electronics

• 2021, IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award, For Outstanding Contributions to Communications Technology

• 2021, elected Fellow, Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association

• 2023 Canadian Award for Telecommunications Research, Canadian Society of Information Technology

• 2024, University Professor, University of Waterloo

• ECE 203 - Probability Theory and Statistics 1
  • Taught in 2022, 2023, 2024
• ECE 307 - Probability Theory and Statistics 2
  • Taught in 2021
• ECE 611 - Digital Communications
  • Taught in 2021

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• J. C. Kieffer and E.-H. Yang, “Grammar based codes: A new class of universal lossless source codes,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, Vol.IT-46, No. 3, pp. 737-754, May 2000.

• E.-H. Yang and X. Yu, “Rate distortion optimization for H.264 inter-frame video coding: A general framework and algorithms,” IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, Vol. 16, No.7, pp. 1774–1784, July 2007.

• K. Zheng and E.-H. Yang, “Knowledge distillation based on transformed teacher matching,” Proc. of the Twelfth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024), Vienna, Austria, May 7 - 11, 2024: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=MJ3K7uDGGl

• E.-H. Yang, S. M. Hamidi, L. Ye, C. Tan. and B. Yang, “Conditional mutual information constrained deep learning for classification,” IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, Vol. 36, No. 8, pp. 15436 -15448, Aug. 2025.

• E.-H. Yang and S. M. Hamidi, “Coded deep learning: framework and algorithms,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 71, No. 11, pp. 8959 -- 8976, Nov. 2025.

• Prof honoured for impact on telecommunications