Prof. Andrew Yao Chi-chih, the first Chinese scientist to receive the Turing Award and Distinguished Professor-at-Large of the Chinese University, discussed the future of computer science in a lecture on 25th January 2005. Prof. Yao specifically highlighted computational biology as an important area of development.
Entitled 'Future Challenges of Computer Science', the lecture took place at the Teaching Centre, Bank of America Tower. It was preceded by an address by Prof. Lawrence J. Lau welcoming Prof. Yao to join the University as Distinguished Professor-at-Large. There were close to a hundred participants, including two former vice-chancellors, Prof. Charles K. Kao and Prof. Ambrose King, members of the University Council, CUHK staff, and members of the public.
In his lecture, Prof. Yao pointed out that a salient feature of technological development will be the fusion of different academic disciplines. The use of the methodologies of physical science to study biology was begun in the 1930s by a few visionary physicists. Now, more than half a century later, that has given rise to the field of molecular biology. Prof. Yao is of the view that the use of computation in biology would lead to a similar explosion and fusion of the two is already taking place in research. He said that he would not be surprised if one day a computational biologist should win a Nobel Prize in medicine.
Prof. Yao believes that biology is only one of the more obvious possibilities. Every field in science and engineering has tended to use internally trained computer experts and develop in-house algorithms. But they are gradually realizing that it is more effective to work with computer scientists before they design their algorithms.
As every field has important computational problems which computer science can help tackle, its role will become increasingly important. Its main challenge lies in compiling a list of problems from all fields and phrasing them in mutually comprehensible ways. Prof. Yao believes that by thus pooling brain power, more solutions to scientific problems will be arrived at far more quickly.