Exemplary Global Service Award Winner Biographies

J. Roberto Boisson de Marca (2011)

"For contributions to building the Communications Society’s global membership, activities, and prestige."

J. Roberto Boisson de Marca was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Southern California, where he earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. He has been in the faculty of the Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro (PUC/Rio), since 1978 where he has held several leadership and administrative positions including Associate Academic Vice President for Sponsored Research.  Twice on leave, Dr. de Marca served as Scientific Consultant with AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Politecnico di Torino and more recently he was a Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology and a Guest Scientist at the NEC Europe Research Labs, Heidelberg, Germany.

He was founding President of the Brazilian Telecommunications Society and in 1990, Prof. de Marca was appointed Scientific Director of the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) where he approved the initial funding of the national research network that opened the way for the widespread use of Internet in Brazil. He was a delegate to several ITU-R TG8/1 meetings, also chair of a working group on QoS, where the wireless 3G technology specifications were developed. 

He is an IEEE Fellow and a full member of both the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and Brazilian National Academy of Engineering. Dr. de Marca was the 2000-2001 President of the IEEE Communications Society, He served three years in the IEEE Board of Directors, first as Division III (Communications Technology) Director and followed by a term as IEEE Secretary. In 2008 he held the office of IEEE Vice President of Technical Activities. He is also Chair of the Wireless Communications & Networking Conference (WCNC) Steering Committee. From 2009 to 2011 he was a member of FINEP’s (the largest Brazilian R&D& Innovation funding agency) Advisory Board.

 

Roberto Saracco (2010)

"For his consistent work to promote the role of ComSoc throughout the world, emphasizing the value of communications technology and its impact on business and society."

Roberto Saracco joined Telecom Italia back in 1971 contributing to the software development and design of the first SPC system in Italy. Through the years he worked on Data Transmission, Switching, Network Management.  In recent years he has worked on the economic side of telecommunications, creating and directing a research group at the Future Centre in Venice.  He is currently Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre responsible for researching the economic impact of the technology evolution and scientific communications in Telecom Italia.

Roberto has participated in several international standardization organizations including OSI, ETSI and T1M1. His leadership has included chairing an EU-level group for planning/leading European research activities in the area of software technologies.  He led the EURESCOM group designing the framework for European cooperation on TMN and led them in information modeling for Pan European Services and Network Management.

He served as consultant to the European Commission on the theme Future Internet.  In the European Union, Roberto chaired the Visionary Group (1996-1997) on Super Intelligent Networks to steer the cooperative research in the EU beyond 2000.  Since 2006, he has been part of a Visionary Book project representing the EU and a rapporteur on information communications technologies at the Science, Technology & Society Forum tracking the progress in the application of the Kyoto agreements and proposing their evolution. 

Back in 1999 and 2000, Roberto proposed and delivered a World Bank project in the InfoDev framework to foster and speed entrepreneurship in Latin American countries.

Roberto is a Senior Member of IEEE where he has held several leading roles. Currently, he is Director of ComSoc’s Sister & Related Societies, member of ComSoc’s Online Content Board, and serves on ComSoc’s Emerging Technologies Committee.  Roberto is also Vice President of the Italian TelecommunicationAssociation (AICT), one of ComSoc’s sister societies.

Roberto has authored several books including The Disappearance of Telecommunications and hundreds of papers in the area of technology evolution and its impact on economics in the framework of business ecosystems.  At various stages in his career, he has taught at universities in Italy and around the world on the subject of telecommunications  and the new economy.  He served as a ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer, also delivering speeches and keynotes at many international conferences.

Roberto received the Salah Aidarous Award in 2005 for his contribution to network management and the Donald W. McLellan Meritorious Service Award in 2007 for his contribution to strengthening the Communications Society presence worldwide.

 

Tomonori Aoyama (2009)

"For fostering and encouraging successful partnerships between ComSoc and its Sister Societies globally"

Tomonori Aoyama received the B.E., M.E. and Dr. Eng. from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1967, 1969 and 1991, respectively. He joined NTT Public Corporation in 1969, carrying out research and development on communication networks and systems in the Electrical Communication Laboratories. From 1973 to 1974, he was a visiting scientist at MIT.

During his career with ECL, he was engaged in R&D on communication technologies including digital signal processing for communication systems, speech coding, Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN), digital cross connect systems, Super High Definition (SHD) image systems, Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) systems, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) systems, B-ISDN, and optical fiber transmission systems.

In 1994, he was appointed Director of NTT Opto-Electronics Laboratories, and in 1995 he became Director of NTT Optical Network Systems Laboratories. In 1997 he left NTT and joined the University of Tokyo as Professor in the Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology.

In 2006, he moved to Keio University, and is currently Professor of Research Institute for Digital Media and Content, Keio University. At the same time, he serves as Program Coordinator in National Institute for Information and Communications Technology (NICT).

His recent research activities cover the new generation networking technologies from layer 1 (e.g. photonic network) to higher layers including ubiquitous networking, sensor networking, 4K super high definition image and digital cinema technologies.

Dr. Aoyama is a member of IEICE (Japan) and IPSJ and IEEE (Fellow). He served as Director, General Affairs of IEICE. He was a Member-at-Large of the IEEE ComSoc Board of Governors and Director of Sister Societies. He also chaired the IEEE ComSoc Japan Chapter. Dr. Aoyama served as general co-chair, technical program co-chair, and session organizer/chairman of several international conferences, symposiums and workshops. He is one of the co-founders of APCC (Asia-Pacific Communication Conference) and ISPACS (International Symposium on Intelligent Signal Processing and Communication Systems).  He was guest editor of several special issues of magazines and transactions of IEEE J-SAC, IEICE and IPSJ.  He is co-author of numerous books on signal processing, ATM, image processing, and optical communications.

He is currently serving as President of IEICE. He promoted sister society relations between IEEE-CS (Communications Society) and both IEEE ComSoc and the Korea Information and Communications Society.  He serves as Chair of the Photonic Internet Forum in Japan, NPO Digital Cinema Consortium of Japan, Global Inter-Cloud Technology Forum, and Vice-chair of the Ubiquitous Networking Forum and the New Generation Network Promotion Forum.

 

Maurizio Decina (2008)

"For exemplary commitment and outstanding service given to the globalization of the IEEE Communications Society"

Maurizio Dècina is Professor of telecommunications at the Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy), Department of Electronics and Information.  He began his career 40 years ago at the SIP/Telecom Italia Headquarters in Rome, and in 1976 joined the University of Rome.  From 1983 to 1987 he was the executive Director of R&D of Italtel in Milan.  In 1988 he joined the Politecnico di Milano, where he was the founder and Director of the CEFRIEL research and education consortium until 2003.  In the early 80s and 90s he worked also as a scientific consultant for AT&T Bell Laboratories in Naperville, Illinois, USA.  Prof. Dècina was a non-executive Member of the Board of Directors of serveral information and communication technology companies, such as Telecom Italia, Italtel, and Tiscali.  He was also the founder of the start-up companies ICT Consulting and Securmatics.

Prof. Dècina was the President of the IEEE Communications Society for the years 1994-1995. Coining the phrase “the Global Communications Society”, he initiated Comsoc’s Sister Societies movement by signing the first official agreement with the Italian national society, AEIT, in December, 1994 in Milan.  This was followed by agreements with the Brazilian SBrT Society, China Institute of Communications (CIC) and Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE) in Mainland China, together with the Chinese Institute of Electrical Engineering (CIEE) in Taiwan.  Working with subsequent Presidents and other ComSoc officers, he helped to expand ComSoc’s relations with more than 20 Sister Societies.

In 1986 he was elected Fellow of IEEE “for technical contributions to voice/data packet switching.”  In 1997 he received the IEEE Award in International Communications, and in year 2000 the IEEE Third Millennium Medal Award.

 

Stephen B. Weinstein (2007)

"For fostering successful partnerships between ComSoc and its Sister Societies and for encouraging a spirit of mutual support and respect in the international communications community"

Stephen B. Weinstein, an IEEE Life Fellow, received his SB, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T., the University of Michigan, and the University of California at Berkeley.   His career has been mainly with Bell Laboratories, American Express, Bellcore (now Telcordia), and NEC Research Labs America.  He is now an independent consultant (Communication Theory & Technology Consulting LLC) advising industrial clients and law firms.

Dr. Weinstein invented the data-driven echo cancellation technique used in voiceband modems and pioneered the application of the Fast Fourier Transform to OFDM/DMT modulation.  He wrote the book Getting the Picture:  A Guide to CATV and the New Electronic Media (IEEE Press, 1986), is co-author of the textbook Data Communication Principles (Plenum, 1992), and is the author of The Multimedia Internet (Springer, 2005), an overview of technologies contributing to audio/video media on the Internet.

Active in IEEE, he served as President (1996-97) of the IEEE Communications Society and Division III Director (2002-2003) on the IEEE Board.  His publications and conferences activities include co-founding the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and the Journal of Communications and Networks [published by the Korea Information and Communications Society (KICS) with the technical cooperation of ComSoc], serving as co-program chair of three IEEE CAS/COM intersociety conferences, and serving as Program Chair for the 2004 IEEE Wireless Communication and Networking Conference (WCNC).  He advanced Sister Society collaboration with national societies in Korea, Russia, and other countries. 

He and his wife, Judith, connected Morris County, NJ public libraries to the Internet in 1993, the second in the country after Seattle.  He received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984 and the IEEE Second Millennium Medal in 2000.  He is the recipient of the Eduard Rhein Foundation's (Germany) 2006 Basic Research Award for his pioneering work in OFDM.