The 2023 Marconi Prize has been awarded to Hari Balakrishnan, the Fujitsu Professor in MIT’s Division of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science (EECS) and a principal investigator within the MIT Pc Science and Synthetic Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

The Marconi Prize, broadly thought-about to be the highest honor throughout the subject of communications know-how, is given yearly to “innovators who’ve made important contributions to growing digital inclusivity by means of the development of data and communications know-how.”

“Hari’s distinctive contributions have formed the course of analysis and discovery in a number of fields, saved lives, and enabled customers to have higher experiences with network-based companies,” says Vint Cerf, chair of the Marconi Society and 1998 Marconi Fellow. “His give attention to scientific excellence that creates constructive impression at scale, alongside along with his humanitarian contributions, makes him an ideal selection for the Marconi Prize.”

Balakrishnan’s analysis has centered on bettering the reliability, efficiency, and effectivity of pc methods, with particular emphasis on networking, cell computing, and distributed methods. At the moment, his analysis focuses on networking, sensing, and notion for sensor-equipped cell units linked to edge and cloud companies, and on designing architectures for extra resilient networked methods. 

His analysis in networking has led to higher communication protocols for cell units speaking over the web, such because the methods he developed to know and enhance the efficiency of knowledge transport over wi-fi networks. He has made important contributions to community congestion management, overlay and peer-to-peer networks, strong routing, and web structure, growing strategies which have discovered their manner into a number of industrial merchandise and community requirements. He has additionally developed new methods to enhance the reliability and efficiency of large-scale distributed methods, that are pc methods with a number of impartial elements that work collectively on a shared aim.

Between 1999 and 2004, Balakrishnan led the event of Cricket, an indoor location system utilizing a novel strategy to distance estimation utilizing ultrasonic and radio alerts. Beginning in 2004, collaborating with Sam Madden, he led a bunch that developed the CarTel cell sensing system by instrumenting autos with cell sensors to measure highway and driving situations. In 2010, he co-founded Cambridge Cellular Telematics (CMT) based mostly on the findings of the CarTel mission. CMT gives a platform to make driving safer utilizing myriad methods together with cell sensing, sign processing, machine studying, and behavioral science.The platform measures and improves driving conduct to scale back threat, automates roadside help with proactive crash detection, and creates a linked insurance coverage claims course of. CMT is right now the world’s largest telematics service supplier, serving tens of millions of customers in 18 international locations. 

Balakrishnan obtained his PhD in 1998 from the College of California at Berkeley’s Electrical Engineering and Pc Science Division, which named him a distinguished alumnus in 2021. He additionally earned a BTech in 1993 from the Indian Institute of Know-how at Madras, which named him a distinguished alumnus in 2013. He was elected to the Nationwide Academy of Engineering in 2015 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. Balakrishnan’s honors embrace the IEEE Kobayashi Computer systems and Communications Award (2021), fellow of the ACM (2008), fellow of the IEEE (2020), Sloan Fellow (2002), and the ACM dissertation award (1998). He has obtained a number of best-paper awards together with the IEEE Bennett paper prize (2004) and 6 “Take a look at of Time” or “Corridor of Fame” awards for papers with long-term impression from ACM SIGCOMM (2011), SIGOPS (2015), SIGMOD (2016), SIGMOBILE (2017, 2018), and SenSys (2019). In 2020, he was awarded the celebrated Infosys Prize in Engineering and Pc Science, and in 2021, he was awarded the SIGCOMM Lifetime Achievement Award.

Balakrishnan has additionally been honored for excellence in analysis and instructing at MIT with the Harold E. Edgerton college achievement award (2003), the HKN greatest teacher award (2018), the Jamieson award (2012), the Junior Bose instructing award (2002), and the Spira instructing award (2001). He has graduated practically 30 PhD college students and 10 postdocs who at present innovate at lots of the most prestigious universities and firms on the earth.

Balakrishnan joins an extended listing of Marconi Prize recipients with sturdy connections to MIT, together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Bob Gallager, James Killian (MIT’s tenth president and the primary Marconi Prize recipient in 1975), David Forney, Tom Leighton, Bob Metcalfe, and Ron Rivest.