Arun Netravali bags US national medal of technology

US President George W Bush has announced the selection of Arun Netravali, former president of Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs and now chief scientist at Lucent, as one of this year's recipients of the US National Medal of Technology. 

Netravali was cited for his pioneering contributions that transformed TV from analog 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 President will present the medals at a ceremony later this year at the White House. 

Netravali led the development of HDTV technology at Bell Labs in the 1990s, and a video encoder based on Netravali's work is today used by over 150 TV stations for their HDTV broadcasts. In 1997, Netravali received an Engineering Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his work on HDTV.

For his scientific achievements, he has received numerous awards, including the Alexander Graham Bell Medal (1991), the Computers & Communications Prize, (1997, NEC, Japan), the Frederik Philips Award from the IEEE (2000), the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) Medal in India (2000), and the Kilby Medal from the IEEE (2001). 

In 2001, he also received the Padma Bhushan Award from the Indian government, the nation's third-highest civilian honor.

Cyber News Service