The 2017 IEEE Honors Ceremony — recognizing those who had the vision, the ingenuity, and the persistence to make their dreams a reality.

To view individual award presentations and acceptance speeches, visit: https://ieeetv.ieee.org/event-showcase/2017-ieee-honors-ceremony

IEEE Life Fellow Kees Schouhamer Immink accepts the most prestigious award of the evening, the IEEE Medal of Honor for pioneering contributions to video, audio and data recording technology, including compact disc, DVD and Blu-ray. Immink’s inventions have impacted people all over the world, and is regarded as the most prolific contributor to consumer electronics of the late 20th century. His eight-to-fourteen modulation (EFM) technique for digital recordings eventually led to the creation of the CD in 1982.

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H. Vincent Poor, an IEEE Life Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academies of Engineering and Sciences, is being recognized for fundamental contributions to signal processing and its application to digital communications. Poor’s work eased the early transition of mobile networks and plays a key role in facing today’s communications challenges, such as bandwidth limitations. Recent work addresses arising problems in smart-grid technology, social networking applications and privacy-preserving techniques.

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IEEE Life Fellow M. George Craford is being recognized for a lifetime of pioneering contributions to the development and commercialization of visible LED materials and devices. An innovator of light-emitting diode (LED) technology for 45 years, Craford led the development of the world’s highest performance red, orange and amber LEDs using metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technology. Today, the world’s multibillion-dollar LED industry uses MOCVD technology.

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IEEE Life Fellow Takeo Kanade, also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, receives recognition for pioneering and seminal contributions to computer vision and robotics for automotive safety, facial recognition, virtual reality and medical robots. Kanade’s work in the 1980’s paved the way for the technology in today’s driverless cars. Kanade also developed the EyeVision multi-camera system debuted at Superbowl XXXV in 2001, which brought enormous attention to the field and spurred further research in computer vision.

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Sir James Dyson, developer of the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner and many other novel devices pervasive to our society, is being recognized for achievements in industrial design, entrepreneurship, and manufacturing technology. The award is also given for Dyson’s services to the engineering profession, and those who have rendered meritorious service to humanity in the IEEE’s designated fields of interest and who are not members of the IEEE. Dyson has demonstrated his commitment to engineering and students of engineering by supporting a new technology hub at Cambridge University, and at the Imperial College of London.

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Yulun Wang, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, is honored for his pioneering contributions to remotely operated surgical robots and telemedical devices. Wang created the first remote-presence robotic system, enabling a clinician to be in two places at once to perform medical-triaging, diagnosis and consultations at a distance. Wang’s innovations in surgical robots such as AESOP - the first voice-operated robotic arm to perform surgery, and telemedicine have benefitted millions of patients worldwide.

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IEEE Fellow Martin Vetterli is being honored for his contributions advanced sampling, signal representations, and multirate and multiresolution signal processing. Vetterli’s work in algorithms and architectures for signal processing have helped advance audio coding, image compression and wireless technologies critical to today’s communication systems. Vetterli has also made groundbreaking contributions to sampling and quantization techniques for bridging the analog and digital worlds.

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Vladimir Vapnik, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, is being recognized for the development of statistical learning theory, the theoretic foundation for machine learning, and support vector machines. In the field of machine learning, Vapnik is considered a living legend who shaped the way modern researches address its challenges, and how it is practiced everyday in applications such as Google and Facebook.           

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Stephen P. Boyd, an IEEE Life Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, is being recognized for inspirational education of students and researchers in the theory and application of optimization. Among Boyd’s influential textbooks, his 2004 Convex Optimization (with L. Vandenberghe) has become one of the most highly cited books on optimization. Software developed based on Boyd’s research has lowered the threshold of optimization technology for non-experts, making way for its expanded use in industry.

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Hugh Griffiths, an IEEE Fellow and Fellow of the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering, is a world-renowned radar researcher and is being recognized for technical leadership and exceptional contributions to multistatic radar. Griffith’s work spurred further research into passive radar, the results which can be experienced through today’s high-performance computers. He also helped developed a unique multistatic radar system called NetRAD, which provided performance advantages at several decibels.

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IEEE Life Fellow, John T. Barr, IV, has served as a volunteer both at the Society level and for the IEEE Board of Directors, being instrumental to changing the IEEE in making it a better organization. Barr contributed to many invaluable changes across several aspects of the IEEE, such as fair distribution of revenue from the IEEE Electronic Library, platform enhancements of IEEE Xplore and two roles as Treasurer. Barr also served as President and General Chair to the MTT-S.

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IEEE Fellow Shlomo Shamai is being recognized for fundamental contributions to information theory and wireless communications, which have been integral to its continued progress. Shamai was one of the first to study cellular communications in the fading regime and also presented the concept of block-fading channels. Recent work includes building basic security for MIMO systems, and is contributing to cloud-based radio network for the upcoming 5G technology and beyond.

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IEEE Life Fellow Marian P. Kazmierkowski, also a Full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, is being honored for leadership in and pioneering contributions to the development of power electronic converters and electric drive control systems. Kazmierkowski’s innovations to processing and controlling the flow of electric energy have impacted applications ranging from industrial machines to transportation systems to renewable energy.  

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ADI (Analog Devices, Inc.) receives the IEEE Corporate Innovation Award for sustained innovation and leadership in the development of high-performance data converter technology and products. Since 1965, ADI has pushed to connect real-world analog systems with state-of-the-art digital processing, and continues to revolutionize systems design for lowering production cost, environmental impact and more. This IEEE Spectrum sponsored award recognizes outstanding innovation by an organization in an IEEE field of interest.

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Three honorees, Ching W. Tang, Stephen R. Forrest and Mark E. Thompson, together accept recognition for their pioneering work on organic devices, leading to organic light-emitting diode displays. By developing, advancing and commercializing light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), they have created a multibillion-dollar industry for advanced lighting and display applications. Universal Display Corporation (UDC) was founded to help tackle OLED stability and performance issues to ensure practical use in commercial electronic devices.

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IEEE Fellow Alberto Broggi is being honored for leadership in vehicular environmental perception, and for setting worldwide milestones in safe and reliable intelligent vehicles. In 2010, Broggi organized the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge, which was the longest-ever test, at 1300 km, for driverless vehicles. In 2013, he led the first test using a driverless vehicle onto a public road, successful at negotiating an intersection, traffic lights and pedestrian crossing.

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SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies) is recognized by IEEE Spectrum for creating and demonstrating a suite of technologies capable of returning a rocket-booster safely to Earth. Under contract with NASA since 2012, one of the company’s long-term objectives is to return and reuse an entire rocket within 24 hours of the first launch. Major milestones in 2016 demonstrated the future capability of this technology.

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A dedicated IEEE volunteer and IEEE Life Fellow, David A. Hodges is being recognized for effective leadership in advancing IEEE’s goals for excellence in publications, conferences and awards. Hodges was instrumental in changing the formula for distributing income among IEEE societies, and also led the creation of IEEE Access for publications.

The IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award is given for distinguished service advancing the technical objectives of the IEEE.

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Henry I. Smith, an IEEE Life Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, is honored for contributions to lithography and nanopatterning for experimental devices in short-wavelength exposure systems and attenuated phase-shift masks. Smith’s work has been critical to the semiconductor industry, and has contributed five decades of inventions that were “well before their time”. In lithography, Smith’s inventions have inspired development of technology that is now the latest state-of-the-art nanolithography for high-performance chips.

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Following the Honors Ceremony introductions with 2017 IEEE President Karen Bartleson and 2017 President-Elect Jim Jeffries, the IIT-M (Indian Institute of Technology Madras) accepts the Spectrum Technology in the Service of Society Award. IIT-M is recognized for bringing solar powered micro-grid access to about one thousand homes without electricity in three cities and multiple villages in India. This low-maintenance solution eliminates their dependency on expensive diesel fuel and the grid.

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IEEE Life Fellow John S. Baras, also a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, is being recognized for exceptional contributions to the conception and commercialization of Internet-over-Satellite systems (IoS), and for leadership in model-based engineering, systems science and engineering research. Baras’ development of secure IoS operation using layered encryption security is now an international standard. Baras also developed and demonstrated model-based systems engineering (MBSE) as crucial to solving challenges in software-intensive systems.

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