(Yicai Global) Oct. 11 -- The Standards Association under the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a key organization that sets standards in technological fields worldwide, has chosen a Chinese national to lead it for the first time.

Yuan Yu, who has served as chair of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Standards Committee and chairman of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society in China previously, will be IEEE SA president in 2022, the world’s largest non-profit professional technical organization said on Oct. 8.

As president of the SA, Yuan will also be a member of the IEEE’s board of directors, the first Chinese citizen to rise this high in the New York-based institution.

Yuan, who holds a PhD in computer science from Beijing’s Tsinghua University, is a researcher, inventor and entrepreneur in the areas of consumer technology, multimedia, virtual reality, augmented reality, connected vehicles, Internet of Things and digital transformation.

The IEEE SA determines the bar in fields such as information technology, communications, power and energy and encourages countries around the world to use them as national standards. It is also developing standards in emerging fields including the IoT, artificial intelligence, wearable devices, high-speed railway and unmanned driving.

Although the IEEE said in May 2019 that due to the blacklisting of Huawei Technologies by the US government, the Chinese telecoms giant will not be allowed to participate in some of its activities. Yuan, who was a director on the SA board at the time, said that the IEEE has done its best to maintain ties with Huawei and let it still take part in standards development meetings.

Editor: Kim Taylor