Oral-History:IEEE Life Fellows

Vasudev K. Aatre - IEEE Fellow in 2002 “for leadership in research and development for strategic electronics and defense systems.”, director of the Defense Research and Development Organization and science advisor to the defense minister
Michael Adler - Adler, 2003 IEEE President and an IEEE Life Fellow, spent his career in industrial research at General Electric. As IEEE President, he sought to make IEEE more relevant to industry, and worked to improve IEEE’s governance. ·
Charles "Chuck" Alexander - Alexander, 1997 IEEE President and an IEEE Life Fellow, spent his career as a university educator and administrator. Alexander had long been active in IEEE educational activities, particularly in providing innovative programs for student members. As IEEE President, he promoted both the importance of engineering to society and the importance of IEEE for engineers.
Anderson, Brian - Anderson's research interests include adaptive and control systems, automation and control engineering, circuits, signal processing, and communications. He is an IEEE Life Fellow.
W. Cleon Anderson - Anderson, 2005 IEEE President and an IEEE Life Fellow, spent his career in a series of industrial positions, ultimately with Level 3 Communications. While on the IEEE Board of Directors, he convinced IEEE to retain the kite logo. As president, he tried to enhance member's careers and improve the functioning of the Board of Directors.
Tatsuo Arai - He is an IEEE Life Fellow and Osaka University full professor in the Department of Systems Innovation and past Vice President of IAARC, Chair of the Robotics and Mechatronics Division of JSME, and a Director of RSJ.
Ronald Arkin - Arkin, an IEEE Life Fellow, has spent most of his career at Georgia Tech, where he is currently Regents' Professor, Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory, and Associate Dean for Research and Space Planning. Much of his work is in robot ethics and deception. He is also known for his corporate consulting, especially his decades-long work for SONY on the AIBO and QRIO robots.
Minoru Asada - Asada, an IEEE Life Fellow, earned a Ph.D. in control engineering from Osaka University in 1982. In 1997, he became a graduate professor in the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems at Osaka University. His research focuses on “computer vision,” or pattern recognition, and the structure of motion in mobile robots, image processing, and robotic behaviors.
Astrom, Karl - Aström has made many practical applications of control theory, including work with artificial intelligence, ship steering, water treatment plants, and heating and air conditioning systems. He is the recipient of the Callender Silver Medal from the Institute of Measurement and Control in London, and is an IEEE Life Fellow.
Aylor, James - Aylor, an IEEE Life Fellow and an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, was president of the Computer Society in 1993. His research focuses on digital design and he is an innovator in the development of VHDL, the VHSIC Hardware Description Language used for describing digital hardware.
Henry L. Bachman - Bachman, 1987 IEEE President, an IEEE Life Fellow, and an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, is an industrial engineer and senior manager with Wheeler Laboratories. As IEEE President he oversaw the IEEE adoption of approval voting for institute elections.
Jean Bacon - Bacon, an IEEE Life Fellow, helped establish computer science as an academic discipline. She is currently Professor of Distributed Systems at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Director of Studies in Computer Science at Jesus College, and heads the Opera Research Group.
Ruzena Bajcsy - Bajcsy, an IEEE Life Fellow, has long been a member of the ECE Department at UC-Berkeley. While her previous research centered on robotics and automation, her current focus is on artificial intelligence; biosystems and computational biology; control, intelligent systems, and robotics; graphics and human-computer interaction, computer vision; and security. This is an oral history recorded in 2002.
Ruzena Bajscy - Bajcsy, an IEEE Life Fellow, founded the General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. After serving as head of the National Science Foundation’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, she began teaching at UC Berkeley. Her recent research in machine perception, robotics and artificial intelligence earned her the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. (This is an oral history recorded in 2010.)
Bruce Barrow - Barrow, founding member of the IRE Benelux Section and elevated to IEEE Fellow in 1970 “for contributions to the field of standardization and to communication theory and practice.”
Baum, Eleanor - Baum, an IEEE Life Fellow, an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, a SWE Pioneer, and an electrical engineer, received her Ph.D. from Polytechnic Institute of New York in 1964. She has played leadership roles in numerous professional associations and was awarded the SWE Upward Mobility Award in 1990. In addition, she was inducted into the Women in Technology Hall of Fame in 1996.
Bensoussan, Alain - Bensoussan completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Paris in 1969. He is an IEEE Life Fellow whose research interests include control theory, applied mathematics, analysis and stochastic processes, and automatic and applied mathematics. For his contributions to the field, he has received several awards and honors, including the 2014 W. T. & Idalia Reid Prize from SIAM.
Vinton Cerf (#355) – Cerf, a Marconi Fellow, an IEEE Life Fellow, and an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, played a significant role in the setup of ARPANET and developed the Transmission Controlled Protocol (TCP) with Bob Kahn.
Paolo Dario - Dario, an IEEE Life Fellow, is a leader in the application of robotics to medicine and rehabilitation.
Andrew Drozd - Drozd, an IEEE Life Fellow, has spent most of his career as head of his own EMC firm, ANDRO Computational Solutions. He is an IEEE Fellow, cited for his the development of knowledge-based codes for modeling and simulation of complex systems for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). He was president of the IEEE EMC Society in 2006-2007.
Sajjad Durrani - Space communications pioneer, COMSAT, NASA, and an IEEE Life Fellow
Bruce Eisenstein (2000) Eisenstein, 2000 IEEE President, IEEE Life Fellow, and Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, spent his career as a faculty member and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Drexel University. As IEEE President, Eisenstein developed a number of structural and process changes that improved the way IEEE was run. · ·
Feisel, Lyle - Feisel, an IEEE Life Fellow and an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, became the founding dean of the Watson School of Engineering at SUNY Binghamton in 1983. He has been an active member of IEEE's Educational Activities Board, the IEEE Education Society, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), ABET as well as the IEEE Foundation.
Ray Findlay - Findlay, 2002 IEEE President and an IEEE Life Fellow, who spent his career on the faculties of first the University of New Brunswick, and then McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, was the third IEEE President from Canada. Findlay spent much of his presidency implementing improvements to IEEE’s financial systems, and coping with post-9/11 conflicts between IEEE’s U.S. incorporation and its global presence.
G. David Forney, Jr. (#254) – Forney, is a Marconi Fellow and an IEEE Life Fellow. His research focused on coding theory and information theory. Specific projects include work on error-correcting codes in deep space missions and on modem development.
Toshio Fukuda - Fukuda is 2020 IEEE President, an IEEE Life Fellow, an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, and a medical robotics pioneer.
Furui, Sadaoki - IEEE Life Fellow, authored and co-authored more than 1,000 papers and books mostly in the fields of speech recognition, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing
Robert G. Gallager (#156) – Gallager, Marconi Fellow and an IEEE Life Fellow, has focused on information theory and data networks, working in fields such as coding, multi-access communication systems, distributed algorithms, routing, congestion control, and random access techniques. He helped found the Codex Corporation.
Susan Graham - Graham, an IEEE Life Fellow and an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, has devoted her research as a software engineer to computer programming language implementation, developing the Titanium system and Harmonia framework. She was the first woman professor of engineering at UC Berkeley. In 2009, she received the von Neumann Medal from IEEE.
Gray, Robert M. (1991) and Gray, Robert M. (1998) Robert M. Gray (1991) - Electrical Engineer, and an IEEE Life Fellow, who made significant contributions in speech processing, developed one of the first examples of a universal code and popularized the algorithm for vector quantifier design.
Clark A. Hamilton - Hamilton, an IEEE Life Fellow (IEEE Fellow, 1995), spent most of his career at NIST in Boulder, Colorado. His many awards include the IEEE Council on Superconductivity Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, and two U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medals for his work on superconducting integrated circuits using Josephson devices, 1984 and 1989.
Don Heirman - Heirman, an IEEE Life Fellow, spent most of his career at Bell Labs, and since has retirement from the Labs, has built a thriving EMC consulting business. Much of his work has been on EMC Standards. He served as EMC Society President in 1980-1981.
Martin Hellman - Hellman is an IEEE Life Fellow, an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, and a researcher in cryptography. His work has been applied to public key encryption systems.
John Hollerbach - John Hollerbach, an IEEE Life Fellow, discusses his career in robotics, focusing on computer vision and artificial intelligence with a biological angle. Outlining his involvement with the artificial intelligence lab and the instigation of the Year of the Robot, he comments on the evolution and community acceptance of robotics as a serious scientific discipline.
Ralph Hollis - Hollis, an IEEE Life Fellow, spent the first part of his career in robotics research at IBM, and then moved to Carnegie Mellon University. His research has centered on haptics, agile precision assembly, and dynamically-stable mobile robots
Irwin Jacobs (#376) – Jacobs, Marconi Fellow, IEEE Life Fellow, and Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, co-founded the Linkabit consulting company and Qualcomm.
Dov Jaron - Jarvon was a biomedical engineer, President of the IEEE EMBS, an IEEE Life Fellow, and an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member. He co-developed the intra-aortic balloon pump.
Ray Jarvis - Jarvis, an IEEE Life Fellow, divided his career between the Australian National University and Monash University. His research spanned a wide range of topics in robotics, including computer vision, intelligent robots, path and pattern recognition and planning, and image processing.
Robert E. Kahn (#432) – Kahn, Marconi Fellow and an IEEE Life Fellow, played an instrumental role in the creation of the Internet, from the creation of ARPANET through ARPANET's transformation into the Internet.
Makoto Kaneko - Kaneko, IEEE Life Fellow, outlines his career in robotics and his contributions to various projects, such as the walking robot and the multi-fingered hand. He discusses his experiments with the hand, the impact of his work, the future direction of his research, and future applications of robotics.
Oussama Khatib - Oussama Khatib, IEEE Life Fellow, discusses his career in robotics, focusing on robot control and motion planning. Describing his work and research, he outlines his time at Stanford University and his involvement in several robotics projects, including the Stanford Robotics Platforms—Romeo and Juliet. Discussing the evolution and challenges of his work, he describes his move towards humanoid robotics and his involvement with robotics societies and activities. He also provides career advice for young people interested in robotics.
Richard Klafter - An IEEE Life Fellow, President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society from 1994-1995, co-author of the early robotics textbook, Robotic Engineering: An Integrated Approach, and longtime professor at Drexel University and Temple University.
Leonard Kleinrock (#434) – Kleinrock, Marconi Fellow and an IEEE Life Fellow, played an important role in the development of ARPANET and of packet switching theory. Recipient of the 2007 National Medal of Science.
Herwig Kogelnik (#431) – Kogelnik, Marconi Fellow and an IEEE Life Fellow, made important contributions to laser technologies, including the invention of the distributed feedback laser.
Kazuhiro Kosuge - Kosuge, an IEEE Life Fellow, is a professor in the department of robotics at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and works on the Dancer Robot Project.
Kraft, Donald - Kraft, an IEEE Life Fellow and is professor emeritus, at Louisiana State University and his research, teaching, and publishing career has focused on bringing techniques from operations research, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms to information retrieval.
Krener, Arthur - Krener, an IEEE Life Fellow, received a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1971 from the University of California, Berkeley and spent his career on the faculty of the University of California, Davis. He was recipient of the 2006 IEEE Control System Society Bode Prize Lecture “for fundamental contributions to the foundations of geometric nonlinear control theory”.
Kressel, Henry - RCA vice president of solid-state electronic research and development
Anurag Kumar - Director emeritus of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, co-author of Wireless Networking (2008) with D. Manjunath and Joy Kuri; and co-edited Communication Networking: An Analytical Approach (2004)
Ken Laker - Kenneth Laker, 1999 IEEE President, IEEE Life Fellow, and Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, spent his career as chair and faculty member of the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a leading expert on microelectronic filters. As IEEE President, he led IEEE in embracing the internet, through IEEE Xplore for electronic publishing, an improved website, and the IEEE Virtual Museum.
Moises Levy - IEEE Life Fellow (IEEE Fellow, 1995), Levy's research, chiefly at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, focused on the intersection of ultrasonics and superconductivity. He also played a central role in the development and evolution of the IEEE Council on Superconductivity.
Lewis, Peter - Lewis, an IEEE Life Fellow, had thirty-three year career at PSE&G and then joined the IEEE staff as Managing Director of Educational Activities. He has been a member of IEEE and its predecessor organizations, the Institute of Radio Engineers and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, since 1955. He joined the IEEE Foundation Board in 2002 and was elected an IEEE Foundation director emeritus in 2008.
Michael Lightner - Lightner, 2006 IEEE President, IEEE Life Fellow, and Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, has long been a faculty member of the Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering Department of the University of Colorado. As IEEE President, he attempted to create a lower-cost membership model.
Liu, Bede - IEEE Life Fellow, worked for the Bell Laboratories technical staff from 1959 to 1962, and then joined the faculty of Princeton University. His pioneering digital signal processing research has focused upon floating-point arithmetic, developing various digital filters and processor programs, image processing for HDTV and medical imaging, and especially the development of discrete-time signal and system theory
Ljung, Lennart - Ljung, an IEEE Life Fellow, attended Lund University, earning a Ph.D. in Automatic Control (1974). His research field is control theory.
Alexis P. Malozemoff - Malozemoff, an IEEE Life Fellow (IEEE Fellow, 2008) spent the first nineteen years of his career at IBM research, where he was best known for the co-discovery of the “giant flux creep” and the irreversibility line in high temperature superconductors (HTS). He spent the remainder of his career at American Superconductor, where he was in charge, among other activities, of AMSC’s rise to a leading role in high temperature superconducting wire and its applications.
Matt Mason - Matthew Mason, an IEEE Life Fellow, discusses his career in robotics, in particular in compliant motion, force control, and fine motion planning. Outlining his involvement in projects at IBM, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon University, he provides insight into the state and evolution of robotics. Describing his current work on manipulation and robotic hands, he comments on the future of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and of the field as a whole.
Gordon Earl Moore (#457), an IEEE Life Fellow, explains his involvement with the integrated circuit conception at Fairchild. His recollections include who conceptualized and invented the IC and how Fairchild was able to proceed with the ideas of its members. Moore talks of setbacks and troubles which he and his colleagues encountered in the processes of the IC development. In addition, he explains how the IC invention was accomplished in the United States, while it failed to be materialized in England and other European countries. In the interview, he also provides lessons for students of technological innovation. The interview concludes with Moore's explanation on the ways in which Fairchild, though a small company, could reap such a success.
José M. F. Moura, 2019 IEEE President and IEEE Life Fellow, is the Philip L. and Marsha Dowd University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. National Academies Navy Study Board, corresponding member of Portugal Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of U.S. National Academy of Inventors, IEEE, and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Troy Nagle -Nagle, 1994 IEEE President and an IEEE Life Fellow, is an academic who started out in digital signal processing at Auburn and later moved into biomedical engineering at North Carolina State. As IEEE President, he confronted a failed upgrade of the Institute’s computer systems and accepted the resignation of IEEE’s Executive Director.
Nils Nilsson - Nilsson, an IEEE Life Fellow, spent the first half of his career at SRI and the second half at Stanford. In both places, much of his work focused on Pattern Recognition and AI.
Oppenheim, Alan - Oppenheim is an IEEE Life Fellow. His principal research interests have been in the field of digital signal processing have focused on nonlinear dynamics and chaotic signals; speech, image, and acoustic signal processing; and knowledge-based signal processing. He is a Fellow of the IEEE (1977) [fellow award for "contributions to digital signal processing and speech communications], and the recipient of the ASSP Technical Achievement Award (1977), the ASSP Society Award (1980), the Centennial Medal, and the Education Medal (1988).
Parker, Alice C. - IEEE Fellow “for contributions to design automation in the areas of high-level synthesis, hardware descriptive languages, and design representation.”
Brad Parkinson (#379) – Parkinson, Marconi Fellow and an IEEE Life Fellow, was program manager of what would become the Global Positioning System.
John Proakis - Proakis, an IEEE Life Fellow, is emeritus and Research Professor at Northeastern University and his research is in the areas of digital communications and digital signal processing.
C.R. Rao - Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, an IEEE Life Fellow, is a mathematician, statistician, and professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and Research Professor at the University at Buffalo. He spent more than forty years at the Research and Training School at the Indian Statistical Institute, and he discovered the Cramér–Rao bound and the Rao–Blackwell theorem.
Daniel Siewiorek - Siewiorek, an IEEE Life Fellow, worked on the design of nine multiprocessor systems, including the Cm* Project, and contributed to the dependability design of over two dozen commercial computing systems.
Martha Sloan - Sloan, 1993 IEEE President and an IEEE Life Fellow, spent her career on the faculty of Michigan Technological University. She was both the first female IEEE President and IEEE Treasurer. As IEEE President, she led the American Association of Engineering Societies Engineers Week.
Russ Taylor - Taylor, an IEEE Life Fellow, has spent much of his career developing robots for surgical applications, first at IBM research and then at Johns Hopkins.
Chuck Thorpe - Charles Thorpe, working chiefly at Carnegie-Mellon, is a long time leader in the development of autonomous land vehicles, better known as self-driving cars. He is is an IEEE Life Fellow.
Uchiyama, Masaru - Uchiyama, an IEEE Life Fellow (IEEE Fellow, 2011), received a Ph.D. in mechanical Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1977. His research interests include robotics, flow measurement, intelligent systems, automatic control and their application to aerospace engineering.
Max Valentinuzzi – Valentinuzzi, an IEEE Life Fellow, set up the Department of Bioengineering at University of Tucumán. His research included impedance microbiology and the application of deconvolution to physiology.
Hendrik Van Brussel - A professor in Mechatronics and Automation at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven who worked on involving cutting dynamics, structural dynamics, computer-integrated manufacture, and micro- and precision engineering. He is an IEEE Life Fellow.
John Vig - Vig, 2009 IEEE President, IEEE Life Fellow, and Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, was employed at the Electronic Components Laboratory at Fort Monmouth, NJ, USA, and worked as a physicist, electronics engineer and program manager, he performed and led research aimed at developing high-accuracy clocks, sensors and low-noise oscillators. During his presidency, he focused on issues such as open access publications, the value of IEEE volunteers, the question of who membership is for, diversity, the 125th IEEE Anniversary, and IEEE's role in creating and preserving history.
·Andrew J. Viterbi (#377) - Viterbi, an IEEE Life Fellow and an Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, did theoretical and practical work on digital communications, including the development of the Viterbi algorithm. He co-founded Qualcomm, which developed the OmniTRACS system and the Eudora e-mail program.
Arthur Winston - Winston, 2004 IEEE President, IEEE Life Fellow, and Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, had a career spanning both industry and applied education. As IEEE President, he championed IEEE as a global organization.
Jacob Ziv (#437), an IEEE Life Fellow, is best known for developing the Lempel-Ziv algorithm for data compression with his colleague, Abraham Lempel. The Lempel-Ziv Data Compression Algorithm was designated as an IEEE milestone in 2004.