A.J. Han Vinck is a senior professor in Digital Communications at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, since September 2014.  He is a member of the Digital Signal Processing group at the Electrical Engineering Department.

His interest is in Information and Communication theory, Coding and Network aspects in digital communications. He is the author of the book “Coding Concepts and Reed-Solomon Codes” .

• 2014-2015 adjunct professor at the National Cheng Kung University Tainan, Taiwan
• 2014-2015 honorary professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa
• 2014 - president of the Leibniz foundation. This foundation supports research and education in the field of Information theory, Neurosciences and Biology.

P ositions in other universities and institutes

• 1980 PhD, University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands (Syndrome Decoding of Convolutional Codes, supervisor:  J.P.M. Schalkwijk).
• 1986 visiting scientist at the German space Agency in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.
• 1990-2014 Ordinary Professor in Digital Communications at the University Duisburg-Essen, Germany (Institute for Experimental Mathematics)
• director (1997-1999) of the Post-Graduate School on Networking, "CINEMA".
• chairman (1998-2001) of the  Benelux Information- and Communication Society (WIC)
• from 2000-2004 he was  the chairman for the  communication division of the Institute for Critical Infrastructures, CRIS.
• in 2003 he was an adjoint professor at the Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
• visiting professor (2010-2012) at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
• he was invited (2011)  to be consultant professor at the Harbin Inst. of Technology, Harbin, China.
• he was a director of the Institute for Experimental Mathematics in Essen
  

IEEE activities (a selection of)

• In 1990 he organized the IEEE Information Theory workshop in Veldhoven, the Netherlands.
• served on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Th. Society from1997 until 2006.
• he is the founding Chairman (1995-1998) of the IEEE German Information theory  chapter.
• In 1997 he acted as Co-chairman for the 1997 IEEE Information Theory symposium in Ulm, (GER).
• In 2003 he was elected president of the IEEE Information theory Society.
• 2008, he was a distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Communciation Society

Founded conferences

• Professor Vinck is the initiator (1990) and organizer of the Japan-Benelux workshops on Information theory (now  Asia-Europe workshop on “Concepts in Information Theory”)
• the International Winterschool  on Coding, Cryptography and Information theory in Europe (Essen, 1991 and 1993). 
• He started (Essen, 1997) and still supports the organization of the series of IEEE conferences on Power Line Communications and its Applications, ISPLC (the 20th ISPLC2016 will be in Bottrop).

Awards

• In 2006 he received the IEEE - ISPLC2006  Achievement award in Orlando (FL, USA) for his contributions to Power Line Communications and for facilitating the transition of ISPLC to a fully financially and technically sponsored IEEE Communications Society conference.
• IEEE elected him in 2006 as a fellow for his “Contributions to  Coding Techniques”
• The SA-IEE annual award was presented to him for the best paper published in the SA-IEE Africa Research Journal in the year 2008.
• best paper award at Chinacom 2013.
• He received the Aaron Wyner distinguished service award from the IEEE  IT Society  in 2015