IEEE Awards Booklet - 2012 - 9

I E E E

M E D A L S

2012 IEEE
Founders Medal

2012 IEEE
Richard W. Hamming Medal

Sponsored by Qualcomm, Inc.

Michael G. Luby

Faqir Chand Kohli

Amin Shokrollahi

For early vision and pioneering contributions to the
development of the IT industry in India

For the conception, development, and analysis of practical
rateless codes

Regarded as the "father" of India's IT revolution, Faqir Chand
Kohli's vision and leadership helped drive India's IT industry
from a handful of computer professionals to a multibillion-dollar
industry with over 2 million highly trained professionals. He
helped improve and develop the human resources required for
successful computer hardware and software engineering growth
in India and modernize India's engineering curricula and facilities to support the IT industry's growth. As Tata Consultancy
Services' first general manager, Dr. Kohli saw the potential
software engineering held for utilizing India's growing engineering talent. However, India did not have the necessary hardware
to support such a vision early on. Dr. Kohli worked hard to
develop deep technical strength at Tata by settling for nothing
less than the state-of-the-art computer technology, which was
crucial to offering quality IT services. Through Dr. Kohli's efforts,
India's world-class IT services industry has become the country's
signature. Dr. Kohli has championed the use of technology to
address social challenges. He designed a multimedia computing
system to aid illiterate adults in Indian languages, which has
been adopted by the Government of India. The system improves
literacy within 30 hours of lessons and its success led to interest
from South Africa in addressing several African languages. While
significantly enabling India's global emergence as a leader in
business and technology, Kohli has also applied the benefits of
technology to address issues ranging from adult illiteracy to
modernizing and advancing India's engineering curricula and facilities to support the engineering and IT industry's growth. He
has spurred a new generation of corporate social responsibility
initiatives where professionals use their technological competencies to improve society.

Michael G. Luby's and Amin Shokrollahi's development of
efficient and flexible data coding methods has enabled the
success of information distribution applications including video
streaming and delivery of data to mobile devices. Known as
fountain codes, the rateless codes created by Dr. Luby and Dr.
Shokrollahi do not possess a specified data rate limitation. Data
can be transmitted in an infinite stream until all receivers have
collected enough data to successfully decode the transmission.
Dr. Luby founded Digital Fountain, Inc. in 1998 for the development, standardization, and commercialization of rateless coding
technology. He developed the first generation of rateless codes,
known as Luby Transform codes, in 1998. Dr. Shokrollahi joined
Digital Fountain in 2000 to develop the second generation of
rateless codes, which became known as Raptor codes. An
extension of the Luby Transform codes, Raptor codes were the
first known class of fountain codes to incorporate linear time
encoding and decoding. They provide high data rates even on
very small devices with limited computational power and energy
resources, such as mobile phones. Qualcomm, Inc. acquired
Digital Fountain in 2009 and developed the RaptorQ advanced
fountain codes under Luby's direction as vice president of technology. An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Luby is vice president of technology
at Qualcomm, Inc., Berkeley, Calif., where he is contributing to
research, standardization, production, and deployment of
MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP). An
IEEE Fellow, Dr. Shokrollahi is a professor with the departments
of Math and Computer Science at the École Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, where has worked since
2003, and the CEO of Kandou Bus, a company he founded in
2011 which uses novel signaling techniques to design highspeed and low-energy serial links.

An IEEE Life Fellow, Dr. Kohli is the former director and deputy
chair of Tata Consultancy Services, Mumbai, India.
Scope: For exceptional contributions to information sciences,
systems, and technology

Scope: For outstanding contributions in the leadership,
planning, and administration of affairs of great value to the electrical and electronics engineering profession

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2012