The first Chinese scientist to receive the prestigious Turing Award Andrew Chi-chih Yao has joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as distinguished professor-at-Large, announced CUHK Thursday.

The Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science, presented annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a selected individual whose contributions are of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field and have propelled the information technology industry.

As a winner of the Award, Yao's profound contributions to the advancement of computer science and technology is widely recognized worldwide.

He was awarded the Award in 2000, "in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity".

Currently three world-class masters have joined CUHK as Distinguished Professor-at-Large. They are Professor Yang Chen Ning, the first Chinese Nobel Laureate, Professor Sir James A Mirrlees, Nobel Laureate in Economics 1996, and Professor Yau Shing Tung, Director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences of CUHK and the only Chinese Fields Medallist.