Stephen Weinstein
Biography
Known for inspiring others to always give their best in each of their IEEE volunteer activities and to pursue increasing involvement, Stephen Weinstein’s contributions to IEEE have strengthened the Institute’s global reach, its publications, and its awards program. A communications engineer with more than forty-five years of experience, Weinstein served as president of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) in 1996-1997, a member of the IEEE Board of Directors in 2002-03, and Vice Chair of the IEEE Awards Board in 2010-2012. To encourage globalization of IEEE and extend the reach of ComSoc, while ComSoc president Weinstein initiated “sister society” agreements with the Korean Institute of Communications Society (KICS) and the Russian A.S. Popov Society and traveled to Vietnam and Germany to initiate sister society negotiations. He also was dedicated to developing numerous joint international technical initiatives and conference events. His efforts resulted in ComSoc becoming the first IEEE Society to have non-US membership exceed US members. Weinstein’s contributions to publications include cofounding IEEE Communications Magazine and the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. He also helped establish the Journal of Communications Networks as an English-language journal of the KICS technically cosponsored by ComSoc, served as its first editor-in-chief, and established a prestigious editorial board with global representation. His contributions as member and Vice Chair of the IEEE Awards Board included redefining corporate recognitions as major IEEE awards, which was critical to enhancing the importance of IEEE's awards to industry. As chair of the Awards Policies and Procedures Board, he significantly improved the clarity and value of the guidelines for finding and rewarding excellent award candidates.
Nearly every wireless device, including computers and smartphones, use orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). The pioneering work of Stephen Weinstein, Leonard Cimini, and Geoffrey Li made this possible and ultimately changed the way we live, work, and play. Weinstein in the 1970’s significantly simplified OFDM using the FFT and made it possible to apply OFDM in practical communication systems. The landmark paper by Cimini in 1985 introduced OFDM in wireless communication. This concept was then extended by the joint work of Li and Cimini in the 1990’s and provided solutions to many critical issues in OFDM for wireless networks. The concepts they introduced are now pervasive, having found their way into nearly every communications standard, including satellite radio, Wireless LANs, and cellular. Their fundamental work in OFDM enabled high-speed wireless computer and human networks, significantly impacting businesses and society as a whole.
An IEEE Life Fellow and recipient of the IEEE Communications Society Exemplary Global Service Award (2007), Weinstein is president of Communication Theory and Technology Consulting, New York, NY, USA, is the recipient of the 2016 IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award and is the co-recipient of the 2024 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award for "fundamental contributions to frequency domain communications including orthogonal frequency division multiplexing."
