Professor Yong Yan from the University’s School of Engineering and Digital Arts has received the highest accolade in the field of instrumentation and measurement with a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Yong Yan was one of 50 engineers admitted to the Royal Academy of Engineering at its annual meeting on 22 September. He was recognised for his “distinctive contribution to improving combustion efficiency and lowering emissions through innovation in electronic instrumentation and successful development of novel instruments, thereby making an important impact on the power industry nationally and internationally”.
Commenting on the Fellowship, Yong said: ‘I am very honoured and extremely privileged to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, one of the most prestigious engineering institutions in the world.’
He added: ‘The Fellowship is only awarded to an engineer who has made exceptional contributions in any field of engineering. It will enable me to perform at a higher level in my research and teaching with a range of support and services from the Academy. The recognition will also help me promote the importance of measurement science and engineering to the UK and the wider world.’
Yong is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the Institute of Physics (IOP). He was recently awarded the gold medal as the most published author of all time in the UK from the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, a leading journal in the field of electrical and electronic engineering. He has published more than 470 papers in international journals and conference proceedings.
Early career
Yong studied for BEng and MSc degrees at Tsinghua University, Beijing, before coming to the UK in 1989 to study for a PhD degree at Teesside. He joined the University of Kent in Canterbury in 2004 from the University of Greenwich (Medway Campus).
‘I joined Kent,’ he said, ‘because it has the best research facility and support in my area of research, including a well-equipped instrumentation laboratory and technical support for applied engineering research.’
Role at Kent
As Professor of Electronic Instrumentation in the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, Professor Yan contributes to teaching, research and administration. He was the School Director of Research from 2008 to 2018. Since 2018, he has been the School Director of Innovation, playing a leading role in promotion of engineering innovation and collaborations with industry, as well as managing the Year in Industry modules. Professor Yan also heads the Instrumentation and Control Research Group, including coordination of our REF submission in this area.