Francis T.S. Yu obtained his B.S degree in electrical engineering from Mapua Institute of Technology (Manila) in 1956, M.S. and Ph.D degrees from University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) respectively in 1958 and 1964. He is currently an Evan Pugh Emeritus (university) Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State. He has authored and co-authored twelve books, co-edited four books, and over 300 refereed papers. Some of his books have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of OSA and SPIE. He was the recipient of the SPIE 2004 Dennis Gabor Award and the co-recipient of the1998 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Award. He was a consultant to Jet Propulsion Laboratory. More recently, he received the 2016 Emmett N. Leith Medal from OSA.

Yu’s research experiences include one-step rainbow holograms; partial coherent information processing; white-light holography; photorefractive and fiber holograms; optical correlators as applied to pattern recognition and target tracking; high-capacity photorefractive fiber memory; fiber specklegram sensors; information optics; optical computing; optical neural networks; optics and information theory. His recent work on: neural networks and education; time-space, information and life; science and the myth of information.