IEEE Awards Booklet - 2010 - 13

I E E E

M E D A L S

2010 IEEE
James H. Mulligan, Jr., Education Medal

2010 IEEE
Alexander Graham Bell Medal

Sponsored by The Mathworks, Inc, Pearson
Education, Inc., National Instruments Foundation
and IEEE Life Members Committee

Sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs

Randy Howard Katz

John M. Cioffi

For contributions to engineering education through
influential textbooks, innovative curricular development,
exceptional mentorship and inspired graduate and
undergraduate teaching

For pioneering discrete multitone modem technology
as the foundation of the global DSL industry

A world-class educator and research advisor at the University of
California, Berkeley, Randy Howard Katz has made a profound
impact on engineering education at Berkeley. Dr. Katz has
graduated more Ph.D. students in computer science, and more
female computer scientists, than any other Berkeley computer
science faculty member. One third of his students have now
become faculty members at other leading universities and institutions. Dr. Katz is well known at Berkeley for being a dynamic
lecturer. He brings his passion for teaching to the undergraduate level with creative freshman seminars such as "From Smoke
Signals to the Internet" and "IT Goes to War." His freshman
seminars offer an opportunity for faculty members and small
groups of freshmen to engage in discussions on various computer
science topics. Katz also teaches a VLSI design course, and his
lecture notes led to his very successful textbook, Contemporary
Logic Design, that has been used by more than 200 universities
worldwide and is considered the market-leading textbook for
introductory hardware design courses. Dr. Katz was one of the
first to revolutionize how logic design is taught by incorporating
field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). With FPGAs, the logic
functions are programmed in small memories, making it ideal for
teaching students how to design logic and making the labs more
affordable. Today, most universities that teach logic design use
the FPGA methods pioneered by Dr. Katz.

Considered by many in the field as the "father of DSL," Dr. Cioffi
participated significantly and tirelessly in inventing, supporting
and commercializing the DSL technology used throughout the
world. He developed the first asynchronous DSL (ADSL) and
very high bit rate DSL (VDSL) modems, whose designs account
for approximately 98% of the over 300 million DSL connections
in use today. Dr. Cioffi began his mission of creating DSL technology, which uses the copper wires already in telephone lines,
during the 1980s at a time when industry thought optical fiber
should be the focus. Dr. Cioffi and his students at Stanford
University developed discrete multitone modulation (DMT),
which enables ADSL technology to operate near the theoretical
channel capacity of the telephone line. Dr. Cioffi then founded
Amati Communications to commercialize his technology. Behind
his leadership at Amati, the American National Standards
Institute (ANSI) chose DMT technology as the U.S. standard for
DSL in 1993. Now, all worldwide DSL standards are exclusively
based on DMT technology. Dr. Cioffi continues to support DSL
development through research at Stanford University and at
ASSIA Inc., a company he founded in 2003 and in which many
major DSL service providers have invested and/or purchased
ASSIA products. His focus is on dynamic spectrum management
(DSM) to improve performance in multiuser DSL and wireless
transmission channels. An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Cioffi is the Hitachi
America Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford
University, Calif., and also the chairman and chief executive
officer at ASSIA Inc., Redwood City, Calif.

An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Katz is currently the United Microelectronics
Corporation Distinguished Professor in Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley,
where he has taught since 1983.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2010