Professor Raymond Yeung Wai-ho (Croucher Senior Research Fellowship 2000)

Croucher Fellow awarded IEEE medal

29 July 2021

Professor Raymond Yeung Wai-ho (Croucher Senior Research Fellowship 2000) has received the IEEE 2021 Richard W Hamming Medal for his contributions to network communication and pioneering development of the BATS code. IEEE Medals are the highest awards presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest technical professional organisation.

Yeung, who is Choh-Ming Li Professor of Information Engineering and Co-Director of the Institute of Network Coding, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), is the first Asian researcher to receive the award since it was established in 1988.

The CUHK academic is an expert in information theory and co-founder of the field of network coding, which he proposed in the late 1990s bringing together information theory, coding techniques, and networking systems.

By applying coding to data packets inside the network, more information can be transmitted at a higher rate, enabling people to download data faster, watch video streaming with less delay, and communicate more securely on the Internet. Yeung and his team went on to develop and spearhead the use of BATS, a network coding technology that solves the problem of packet loss in wireless multi-hop communication. He also engaged in frontier work in information theory.

Yeung was cited for the IEEE medal for contributions that “forever changed our understanding of network communication, impacting error-correction coding, information security, wireless communication, and data storage”.

Looking ahead, Yeung said: “My team and I will continue to explore new wireless network protocols as well as to maximise the applications of BATS code in various aspects, including the internet of things, space and satellite communications, and many others, for the benefit of society.”



Raymond W Yeung received his BS, MEng and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1984, 1985, and 1988, respectively. He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1988. Since 1991, he has worked at Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he is currently Choh-Ming Li Professor of Information Engineering. He has served as Co-Director of the Institute of Network Coding since 2010. Yeung received his Croucher Senior Research Fellowship in 2000.


To view Professor Yeung’s Croucher profile, please click here