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NewsvineThe National Academy of Engineering (NAE) recently elected four University professors based on their innovative research and groundbreaking work in engineering and technology education. Robert Gray, Mark Horowitz, Teresa Meng and Sebastian Thrun are among the group’s 64 newest members, increasing the number of academy members and foreign associates from Stanford to 87.
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Robert Gray, the Lucent Technologies Professor of Engineering and vice chair of the Electrical Engineering Department.
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Mark Horowitz was one of the four Stanford professors recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
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Professor Teresa Meng was one of the four Stanford professors recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
The NAE is a private organization consisting of more than 2,000 peer-elected members and foreign associates. As professionals in the business, academic and governmental sectors, those elected are among the world’s most distinguished engineers. Members are dedicated to furthering the human condition through exceptional engineering achievement, focusing specifically on the relationships between engineering, technology and quality of life.
Gray, a professor of engineering and vice chair of the electrical engineering department, was applauded for his contributions in the field of information theory and data compression.
“My work has dealt both with the underlying theory and with coding algorithms which try to achieve nearly optimal performance,” he said. “The award is unique because there is only one NAE, and it feels great to be elected to it.”
Information theory seeks to develop relevant mathematical models for communications systems and measure their optimal performance levels.
“For example,” Gray explained, “how fast and reliably can information be communicated through communications channels like the Internet, radio, deep space and telephone lines?”
He has also completed research on data compression, which reduces the amount of information needed to communicate signals.
Horowitz, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, was also praised for his research on computer chip design and high-bandwidth memory interface.
“It is quite an honor and a privilege to be elected to the NAE,” he said. “It is so selective in its membership.”
His work has mollified two problems associated with an increased reliance on computational scaling. The first is caused by data’s inability to fit onto a processor chip because of its growth in size over time.
“This means that the rate you can transfer data from the ‘memory’ to the computing unit is a problem,” Horowitz explained.
To minimize the memory bandwidth necessary, most computers use a “cache” to recall data values that have recently been used. Since each processor can potentially have a localized copy of a variable, a second dilemma arises when many processors are connected together.
“We worked on how to build machines that could keep the caches consistent even with large — 64 or higher — processors,” Horowitz said. “We also build some working versions of these systems.”
The NAE also commended Electrical Engineering Professor Teresa Meng, as well as Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Sebastian Thrun. Meng was praised for her efforts on the development of wireless network technology. Her work has enabled wireless computer networks to become more inexpensive, reliable and efficient. Thrun was recognized for his work with mobile robot localization; he designed robots to nurse the elderly and map toxic mining.