Events

Speaker: Dr. Andrew Viterbi
Faculty Host: Professor Debasis Mitra

Abstract: Life in the Twenty-first Century has been inalterably affected by the full emergence of digital wireless connectivity. More than half the denizens of our planet have become both beneficiaries and victims of the fruits of the broadly defined technologies known as digital and wireless. Though they have been twinned through the ubiquitous devices which have grown to dominate our consciousness, their origins have little in common. Their merger has been completed through three eras of development: The scientific Innovation Era (1E), the system Implementation Era (2E) and the Exploitation Era (3E). The last has brought unchallenged benefits along with serious challenges. 

Bio: Dr. Andrew Viterbi is a co-founder and retired Vice Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of Qualcomm Incorporated. He spent equal portions of his career in industry and in academia as Professor in the Schools of Engineering and Applied Science, first at UCLA and then at UCSD, at which he is now Professor Emeritus. He is currently president of the Viterbi Group, a technical advisory and investment company. He also serves as a Presidential Chair Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California and as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. His principal research contribution, the Viterbi Algorithm, is used in most digital mobile phones and digital satellite receivers, as well as in such diverse fields as data recording, voice recognition and DNA sequence analysis. More recently, he concentrated his efforts on spread spectrum multiple access technologies for satellite and cellular wireless communication. Dr. Viterbi has received numerous honors both in the U.S. and internationally. Among these are eight honorary doctorates and four Academy memberships as well as the IEEE Medal of Honor, the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Franklin Medal and the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the National Academy of Engineering. 

Event Contact: Eliese Lissner | [email protected]