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Professor Benjamin W. Wah, Provost and Wei Lun Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), is named Distinguished Alumni in Computer Science by the University of California, Berkeley in recognition of his valuable contributions to the field of computer science. One of two recipients this year, Professor Wah joined the ranks of UC Berkeley’s most accomplished alumni and was honoured at an award ceremony recently taken place at the Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium 2011 in California. Professor Wah is one of the few Chinese who have ever been presented this honour.

Professor Wah is grateful for his Alma Mater’s commendation, ‘I am deeply honoured by this recognition from my Alma Mater. This award is a recognition of the numerous students and colleagues I have worked with in my career. My recent return to UC Berkeley brought back so much memory of the wonderful days when I was a graduate student there, especially the many things I learned that benefited me in the last 35 years. I am particularly thankful to my mentor and thesis advisor at UCB, Emeritus Professor C. V. Ramamoorthy, who transformed me from a naive graduate student to what I am today. I am also fortunate to have the support of my wife Christine and our twin daughters Catherine and Elaine in the last 30 years. As to my future plan, I am strongly committed to the developments of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the years to come.’

Professor Wah was the Franklin W. Woeltge Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is a prominent computer scientist, with expertise in non-linear programming, multimedia signal processing and artificial intelligence. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and has served as the President of IEEE Computer Society. He has received numerous international honours and awards for his distinguished academic and professional achievements. Among these are the W. Wallace McDowell Award, the Tsutomu Kanai Award and the Richard E. Merwin Distinguished Service Award of the IEEE Computer Society.

Professor Wah has long been committed to enhancing the development of higher education and research in Hong Kong. He was a member of the Research Grants Council of the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong between 2005 and 2009, and served as the Chairman of its Engineering Panel between 2006 and 2009.

He received his BS and MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Columbia University, and his MS in Computer Science and PhD in Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He began teaching in Purdue University in 1979, and later joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1985. He also served as Director of the Advanced Digital Sciences Centre established by the University of Illinois in Singapore in 2009, with funding from the Singapore government’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research.

About Distinguished Alumni Award in Computer Science at UC Berkeley

The award was established by the Division of Computer Sciences of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at the University of California, Berkeley in 1999 to recognize its alumni who have gained renown as distinguished scientists for their contributions to the field of computer science. Forty-three world-renowned computer scientists have been presented this honour, including eight Turing Award laureates – Dr. Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Ken Thompson, Dr. Jim Gray, Dr. Niklaus Wirth, Dr. Butler Lampson, Dr. Leonard Adleman, Dr. Charles Thacker, and Dr. Barbara Liskov. The Turing Award is widely recognized as the Nobel Prize of computer science. Other recent past Distinguished Alumni Awards in Computer Science honourees include: Herve Gallaire, President and CTO, Xerox Innovation Group; Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google; Steven Wozniak, co-founder, Apple Computer Company; and Barbara Simons, past president, ACM.