The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has released its 2020 fellow list. University of Macau (UM) professor Jia Weijia has made the list. The fellowship is testament to Prof Jia’s outstanding contributions in the fields of routing protocol optimisation and matching networks.

Prof Jia is the eighth professor from UM to have been elected an IEEE fellow. The IEEE is an international association of engineers of electronics technology and information science, with more than 420,000 members in over 160 countries. The IEEE fellowship is the highest honour bestowed upon its members. The title is considered an authoritative and important achievement in one’s career in the field of science and technology. The total number of IEEE fellows selected each year cannot exceed 0.1 per cent of the total voting membership.

Prof Jia is the deputy director of UM’s State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City and a chair professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science, Faculty of Science and Technology. His main research interests include application of sensors in cyber-physical systems, men-machines-things knowledge graph completions, big data processing, next-generation networking and communications, and the Internet of Things. Prof Jia has attained pioneering research achievements in multicast and multimedia communication, especially in Anycast routing protocol and matching networks. He has received two patents in the United States and five patents in mainland China. He has published more than 500 papers in leading international journals and conferences. He is the author or co-author of 14 books. In 2017, Prof Jia received a first prize in the natural science category of the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) from the Ministry of Education.