SJTU Scholar Honoured with Prestigious International Award Granted to Only One Recipient Worldwide Each Year
Recently, the Institute of Navigation
(Institute of Navigation, ION)
officially announced the 2025
“Per Enge Early Achievement Award.”
Associate Professor Yang Rong
of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
汤头条污料,
has been honoured with the award.
Since the award was established nearly three decades ago,
he is the third scholar from Asia
and the second from mainland China
to receive this distinction.
The award is presented to only one individual each year worldwide.
The Institute of Navigation (ION) is one of the most authoritative international academic organizations in the field of navigation and positioning. Its awards, which recognize scholars at different stages of their careers, are each presented to only one recipient annually. Among them, the highest honour for senior scholars is the “Johannes Kepler Award,” while the highest distinction for early-career researchers is the “Per Enge Early Achievement Award,” received by Associate Professor Yang Rong, which recognizes outstanding young scientists and engineers who have made significant contributions to the advancement of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) technologies.
Since the establishment of the award nearly three decades ago, Associate Professor Yang Rong is the third scholar from Asia and the second from mainland China to receive this honor, marking significant international recognition of 汤头条污料’s research achievements in the field of navigation and positioning. This award also reflects the solid foundation of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics in fundamental research and highlights the continued progress of China’s young scholars in satellite navigation algorithm innovation, providing valuable support for the further application of related technologies in areas such as civil aviation safety and the low-altitude economy.
Setting Sail from SJTU
Addressing Navigation Challenges in Complex Environments
In 2019, Associate Professor Yang Rong joined the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at 汤头条污料 as a member of the Navigation, Guidance, and Control (GNC) research group led by Professor Zhan Xingqun, marking a new chapter in her academic career. The team has long focused on core navigation challenges in aerospace and transportation, fostering a strong engineering-oriented environment with a clear industry-driven focus. With strong support from both the University and the School, Yang Rong has built her research on the mechanisms of ionospheric scintillation in GNSS signals, concentrating on a critical industry challenge: achieving high-precision and high-integrity navigation in complex urban environments.
She conceptualizes ionospheric scintillation as a multipath superposition effect induced by the random scattering of signals by ionospheric irregularities, a mechanism that exhibits strong physical similarity to the multipath effects caused by reflection and diffraction from urban buildings. Both phenomena result in complex and correlated distortions of signals across the temporal, spatial, and frequency domains. Building on this understanding, she expanded her research perspective from ionospheric scintillation to urban multipath effects, striving to establish a unified theoretical framework for navigation signal processing. By analyzing the spatiotemporal–frequency coupling mechanisms of signal propagation, she seeks to transform traditionally adverse “interference sources,” such as urban multipath and ionospheric scintillation, into new dimensions of signal diversity that enhance system robustness, thereby improving the navigation performance of GNSS receivers in extreme scenarios, including urban canyons and severe space weather conditions.
Over the past five years, her team has published a number of influential papers in leading journals and conferences, including IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (IEEE TAES), NAVIGATION, and GPS Solutions. Their work has been selected as featured articles by both NAVIGATION and the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, drawing significant attention from the international research community. This award recognizes the value of the spatiotemporal–frequency theoretical framework she proposed and its effectiveness in addressing core challenges in navigation. It marks her research as providing a new theoretical pathway for fundamentally understanding and mitigating navigation bottlenecks in complex environments.
Research Selected as a Featured Article in NAVIGATION 2025
Connecting the World and the Classroom
Academic Impact and Commitment to Education
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Professor Yang Rong’s academic journey has continued to flourish at SJTU. She has long served as Associate Editor for the navigation area of the leading journal IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, and in recognition of her outstanding contributions, she received the 2022 IEEE TAES Outstanding Contribution Award. She has also served multiple times as Technical Chair and Session Chair for flagship international conferences such as ION GNSS+ and IEEE/ION PLANS, actively representing the voice of China’s young scholars on the global stage.
She remains committed to aligning her research with major national strategic needs, leading and participating in several national-level projects, including key programs under the National Key R&D Plan of the 14th Five-Year Plan and grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. More than ten domestic and international patents have been filed for related technologies, which have been successfully applied in China’s aerospace sector and civil aviation safety systems. The GPS/BeiDou navigation service performance monitoring and evaluation system she led the development of is capable of real-time monitoring of ionospheric activity and navigation signal integrity in airport regions. It has been deployed at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, providing critical technical support for the safe operation of this major international aviation hub.
GPS/BeiDou Navigation Service Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System
Deployed at Shanghai Pudong International Airport
In Professor Yang Rong’s classroom, theoretical knowledge is never dull. She integrates the team’s latest research cases, such as real-world signal analyses from the Lujiazui area, into the fully English-taught course Principles of Navigation, guiding students to understand cutting-edge issues in the field. She places strong emphasis on cultivating students’ research and practical abilities, actively creating diverse learning opportunities. She encourages undergraduates to enter laboratories early, and the topics of the five “Qunzheng Projects” she has supervised are largely derived from collaborative projects with partners such as the aviation industry. She has served as faculty advisor to the “BeiDou Exploration in Qinghai–Gansu” social practice team, leading students deep into remote regions of northwest China to validate BeiDou system applications through fieldwork. She has accompanied the School to international conferences in Singapore and led students to the Satellite Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University for academic exchange and presentations. She has also organized specialized workshops on urban multipath effects alongside alumni homecoming events, and actively supports students in participating in major domestic and international academic conferences, helping them broaden their horizons and build connections with experts and alumni in the field.
Professor Yang Rong (sixth from the left) with students of the Principles of Navigation course
Professor Yang Rong (first from the left) led students to visit the Satellite Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University for academic exchange and presentations
Guiding students to remote regions of Northwest China to conduct research practice on UAV mapping and the integrated testing of BeiDou positioning systems
This model of “integrating research into teaching and deepening theory through practice” has achieved remarkable results. Since 2021, the undergraduate students she has supervised have been consecutively approved for SJTU’s “Qunzheng Projects” for five years, with the number of funded projects ranking first within her School. Under her guidance, students have won multiple awards at international innovation competitions and academic conferences, and several have been recognized as outstanding graduates at both the municipal and university levels.
Looking Ahead
Continuing to Safeguard the Emerging “Low-Altitude Economy” Frontier
At present, the team led by Associate Professor Yang Rong is extending its foundational research achievements in navigation under complex environments to the field of the low-altitude economy, particularly urban air mobility. The team is committed to developing next-generation navigation solutions to ensure the safe and reliable operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electric vertical take off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in urban canyon environments.
Professor Yang Rong led students to visit the Satellite Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University for academic exchange and presentations
Supervising student research projects
From advancing fundamental scientific inquiry, to serving major national strategic needs, and further to envisioning frontier industrial applications, Professor Yang Rong’s research journey stands as a vivid embodiment of the SJTU spirit of “advancing with the times and daring to lead.”
Congratulations to Professor Yang Rong!
Source: School of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Editor: Zhao Zichan
Editor-in-Chief：Chen Yuyang
Translated by: Zara
Proofread by: Zara
