27 August 2018 – NUS Computing alumnus Dr Yao Penghui was awarded the Thousand Talents Plan for Young Researchers, a prestigious research grant initiated by the Chinese government, on 8 February this year.
The Thousand Talents Plan for Young Researchers provides talented researchers with RMB 500,000 and a research subsidy of up to RMB 3 million to pursue their research in China. Dr Yao is one of over 3,000 applicants to apply for the grant, from which 650 researchers were selected. The grant is awarded to applicants under the age of 40 who are engaged in scientific research. Applicants are required to possess a PhD degree from a prominent overseas university and have undertaken formal teaching and research positions in overseas universities, institutions or enterprises. In receiving this grant, awardees are recognised as future leaders of their fields and elites among their peers.
“It was a surprise and pleasure to receive this award. Receiving it has freed me from applying for competitive and time-consuming grants in an unfamiliar environment, as I have been away from China for ten years. The local government and my employer, Nanjing University, has also provided me monetary subsidies and welfare benefits, which will help me settle down and focus on my research,” said Dr Yao.
Dr Yao graduated from NUS Computing with a PhD in Computer Science in 2014, where he was under the supervision of Associate Professor Rahul Jain at the Centre for Quantum Technologies. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Nanjing University, China. His research interests are in theoretical computer science and quantum computing. His research focuses on studying the amount of resources required for a computational task in a distributed system. Dr Yao and his collaborators develop classical and quantum information theory and design message compression algorithms for classical and quantum computer systems.
