Each year the IEEE-USA Awards and Recognition Committee selects an individual for the IEEE-USA George F. McClure Citation of Honor — for exemplary contributions toward achieving the aims of professional activities in the United States. This year, the committee chose two recipients: Ashutosh Dutta and Paul Sanberg. Both recipients have excelled in their fields, brought innovations to the market, and received numerous patents. They have emphasized and encouraged professional collaboration to speed innovation, focus resources, and maximize impact.
Dr. Ashutosh Dutta is a computer scientist, engineer, academic, author and IEEE Fellow. He is currently Senior Scientist and 5G Chief Strategist at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Applied Physics Lab. He also serves as the Chair for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Engineering for Professionals program at JHU; and as adjunct faculty in the Computer Science Department.
A long-time IEEE volunteer, Dutta has served in many volunteer leadership positions at various levels. He was founding co-chair for Future Networks, where he currently serves as chair; the Communications Society’s member-at-large (where Dutta demonstrated leadership in creating the International Network Generations Roadmap); architect and co-chair for the IEEE virtual testbed; and co-founder of 5G flagship conferences, and 90 5G summits, around the world. Dutta also serves as chair for the IEEE Open RAN Industry Connection.
Dutta’s in-depth expertise and leadership in developing and implementing research, analysis and design initiatives, have established him as a well-recognized mobility and security expert and technical leader in mobility management. He invented a new framework for mobility management optimization and led the standardization of various parts of this framework in IEEE 802.21, IETF and 3GPP. This framework includes a systematic and formalized system model that analyzes the primitive operations associated with handoff, investigates the behavioral properties of the system, and characterizes system optimization techniques. The model predicts system performance for optimized handoff operations, and it generates the optimal sequence of execution of events based on expected performance and resource constraints.
As the CTO of wireless, and head of the Innovation Center at NIKSUN — Dutta devised a mechanism based on correlation techniques; built a product able to monitor interfaces of 3G and 4G networks to detect and mitigate cyber-attacks in 3G and 4G/LTE networks; and helped deploy this product on networks around the world.
“Ashutosh is a volunteer with boundless energy and enthusiasm for IEEE activities,” stated Prakash Ramchandran of Emerging Open Tech Foundation (eOTF), in his support for Dutta’s nomination. “He is the co-head of the IEEE Future Networks initiative, and has been exemplary in how he has led the initiative.”
Dutta is author of more than 110 papers, a book, four book chapters, and has been awarded 31 patents. He is a distinguished alumnus of NIT Rourkela, India; and he obtained his MS in Computer Science from NJIT; and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University.
Dr. Paul R. Sanberg is an IEEE Fellow, a scientist, and an academic who has led a transformation in the way our country recognizes and promotes innovation and entrepreneurship for the past 20 years.
Sanberg founded and is president of the National Academy of Inventors (NIA); and he has helped establish numerous NAI Chapters at universities across the country. Under his leadership, the organization has grown to more than more than 4,000 individual inventors, as well as 250 university, governmental and non-profit research institutes. Sanberg is the founder and editor-in-chief of Technology & Innovation: The Journal of the National Academy of Inventors. He also founded and is currently serving as chair of the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.
Amit Goyal, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor at SUNY-Buffalo, said in nominating Sanberg, “The National Academy of Inventors has become a transformational organization — making unprecedented strides in helping increase recognition for the impact of academic research on society, encouraging new innovation, and inspiring and mentoring new researchers and students.”
In addition to being a regular panelist and speaker on innovation and entrepreneurship, Sanberg is a leader in the field of regenerative medicine for brain injury and disease. He has received more than 150 patents; and has brought many of those patents to the marketplace, through the launching several companies.
Sanberg has also worked tirelessly to build bridges between researchers in the field, by co-founding the American Society for Neural Therapy & Repair (dedicated to pioneering biologic and reparative therapies to treat neurological disorders), the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (to enhance collaboration and innovation across borders), and founding and serving as executive director for the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of Southern Florida (an international research center studying new ways to repair the nervous system affected by neurodegenerative diseases.)
The George F. McClure Citation of Honor is given annually in honor of George F. McClure. McClure’s IEEE volunteer activities spanned more than 50 years. He chaired the IEEE Orlando Section and Florida Council; and he served on, or chaired, among others, the IEEE Communications Committee, the IEEE Life Members Committee, the IEEE Foundation, and the IEEE Individual Benefits and Service Committee. McClure’s other IEEE contributions included serving as technology policy editor for Today’s Engineer. He wrote more than 89 articles for that publication, on a wide spectrum of technology, policy and career-oriented subjects.
IEEE-USA Awards: Nominate a Colleague Today
Nominations for the 2023 IEEE-USA Awards are open now, and will be accepted through 15 September 2023. Nominate someone today!
