International

Top U.S. award for Indian scientist

By Anand Parthasarathy

Arun Netravali

The United States President, George W. Bush, on Friday announced the selection of Arun Netravali, former president of Bell Labs and now chief scientist at Lucent Technologies, as one of this year's recipients of the U.S. National Medal of Technology.

Netravali was cited for his "pioneering contributions that transformed TV from analogue to digital, enabling numerous integrated circuits, systems and services in broadcast TV, CATV, DBS, HDTV, and multimedia over the Internet; and for technical expertise and leadership, which have kept Bell Labs at the forefront in communications technology.''

The National Medal of Technology recognises men and women who embody the spirit of American innovation and have advanced the nation's global competitiveness. The medal recognises groundbreaking contributions that help commercialise technologies, create jobs, improve productivity and stimulate the nation's growth and development. The medal, which is the nation's highest honour for achievement in technology, was established by Congress in 1980 and is administered by the Department of Commerce. The President will present the medals at a ceremony later this year at theWhite House.

"This honour highlights what we at Lucent have known for many years: that Arun Netravali is a brilliant scientist,'' commented Lucent chief executive officer, Patricia Russo.

"His contributions are playing a significant role in today's digital video revolution. He also piloted Bell Labs through a critical period in its long and distinguished history. As a result, the world continues to depend on Bell Labs today as a leading source of new communications technologies and a veritable cornucopia of scientific breakthroughs.''

The compression technology Mr. Netravali developed is essential to digital video systems used in cable and network television, high-definition television (HDTV), video telephones, and video conferencing systems. In addition, his work is the basis for systems that use streaming video over the Internet, web sites that store compressed video, and multimedia computers. Cable TV set-top boxes, direct broadcast satellite receivers, and HDTV sets that use the MPEG and HDTV standards rely on Mr. Netravali's compression algorithms, which also made communication services such as video conferencing and Internet streaming video an economic reality.

Mr. Netravali led the development of HDTV technology at Bell Labs in the1990s, and a video encoder based on his work is today used by over 150 TV stations for their HDTV broadcasts. In 1997, Mr. Netravali received an Engineering Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his work on HDTV. He served as president of Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies' research and development division, from 1999 to 2001. Under his leadership, Lucent dramatically increased the speed with which it was able to move innovations from the laboratory to market. He now serves as Lucent's chief scientist, working with the academic and investment communities to identify important new networking technologies and advising Lucent's senior management on technical and customer issues.

Mr. Netravali has received numerous awards, including the Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the Computers & Communications Prize, (Japan), the Frederik Philips Award from the IEEE and the National Association of Software and Services Companies Medal (India). He was also awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Indian Government.

Mr. Netravali has authored more than 170 technical papers and co-authored three books: Digital Picture Representation and Compression (Plenum, 1987), Visual Communications Systems, (IEEE Press, 1989) and Digital Video: An Introduction to MPEG-2, (Chapman and Hall, 1996). He holds more than 70 patents in the areas of computer networks, human interfaces to machines, picture processing and digital video and television.

Mr. Netravali was an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught graduate courses at City College (New York), Columbia University and Rutgers University. He has served on the editorial board of the IEEE, and is currently editor of several journals. He also serves on the board of a number of organisations.He received his bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and master's and doctorate degrees from Rice University in Houston, Texas, all in electrical engineering.

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