Meet Professor En-Hui Yang
En-hui Yang has been a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo since June 1997. He is a former Tier 1 Canada Research Chair holder in Information Theory and Multimedia Data Compression. He is the founding director of the Leitch-University of Waterloo multimedia communications lab, a co-founder of SlipStream Data Inc. (now a subsidiary of BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion)), and the founder of BicDroid Inc. He currently serves as an Executive Council Member of the China Overseas Friendship Association, an Expert Advisor for the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council of China, a Board Trustee of Huaqiao University, a member of IEEE Founders Medal Committee, and an advisor for other national and provincial bodies.
He served as a Board Governor of the University of Waterloo; a Review Panel Member for the International Council for Science; an Evaluator for the 2017 Japan Prize (one of the most prestigious awards in science and technology fields after the Nobel Prize); 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.
His research interests range from multimedia compression, information theory, digital communications, source and channel coding, image and video coding, deep learning and deep neural networks, to information security. He has exemplified research excellence in both theory and practice by introducing fundamental source coding theory; solving long- standing open problems in source coding; inventing state-of-the-art lossless and lossy compression algorithms for encoding text (such as web pages and emails), images, and video; designing the first-ever information theoretically secure key management protocols; inventing personalized and cryptographically secure access control in operating systems to enable data self-protection against known and unknown attacks; and transforming his theoretic results and algorithmic inventions into practice. With over 230 papers and more than 250 patents/patent applications worldwide, his research work has benefited people in 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 the billions; his data self-protection technologies are now incorporated into hundred millions of smart phones.
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). He is also a recipient of several awards and honors, including the 2021 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award, the prestigious Inaugural Ontario Premier's Catalyst Award in 2007 for the Innovator of the Year (proceeds of the award were donated entirely to the University of Waterloo to create an annual En-hui Yang Engineering Research Innovation Award to encourage and support research and innovation - all Waterloo Engineering faculty are eligible to apply); the 2007 Ernest C. Manning Award of Distinction, one of Canada's most prestigious innovation prizes; the 2013 CPAC Professional Achievement Award; the 2014 IEEE Information Theory Society Padovani Lecture; the 2014 FCCP Education Foundation Award of Merit; Honorary Professor of Huaqiao University (2015), and the 2018 Distinguished Overseas Scientist Award from the Information Theory Society of Chinese Institute of Electronics. Products based on his early inventions and commercialized by his previous company, SlipStream, received the 2006 Ontario Global Traders Provincial Award. In 2011, he was selected for inclusion in Canadian Who's Who.
Professor Yang is the most all-around outstanding researcher and practitioner in the field of data compression, save the incomparable Claude E. Shannon who created information theory and in the process created the subject of data compression.