Esteemed Chinese computer scientist awarded Kyoto Prize for work playing ‘a vital role in modern society’
- Andrew Yao Chi-chih awarded for contributions to computer science and its influence on issues such as secure computing and big data processing
- Yao said past 40 years had seen many advances in MPC theory and in hardware and algorithms, with implications for fintech, data training and drug discovery
Renowned Chinese computer scientist Andrew Yao Chi-chih, whose research has had far-reaching implications for e-commerce and cryptoasset management, has been recognised with the international Kyoto Prize in advanced technology.
Yao, the dean of the institute for interdisciplinary information sciences at Tsinghua University in Beijing, is known for introducing secure multiparty computation (MPC) in 1982, a concept that enables computation on encrypted values.
“If you use MPC, it’s possible to have multiple databases do any joint computations without leaking its own data,” Yao said in an online lecture on Wednesday. “We can share data without seeing them.”
He explained its application with the “millionaires’ problem” in which two people wish to compare who has more money without revealing any quantitative information, that is without them confessing how much they have.