Jon M. Peha
Assistant Director
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Abstract: In the last two years, the President of the United States and the U.S. National Broadband Plan have elevated the importance of spectrum policy to new heights, embraced ambitious goals for progress, and proposed consideration of new and sometimes controversial approaches intended to improve spectral efficiency. This will produce a period of opportunity for advances in dynamic spectrum sharing. Indeed, while there have been times when spectrum policymakers have been slow to adopt new ideas from the research community, the research community may now find it challenging to keep up with the needs of spectrum policymakers for rapid progress. Meeting objectives for efficient use of spectrum will require advances in an already-complex innovation process, where putting concepts into practice often includes theoretical technical and policy research, extensive and transparent experimentation, standardization, changes in regulation, and changes in enforcement mechanisms, all before a single device can be deployed.
Biography: Jon M. Peha is serving as Assistant Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for Communications and Research issues, and before that he was the Chief Technologist of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. He is also a Full Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department ofElectrical & Computer Engineering and the Department of Engineering & Public Policy, and former Associate Director of the university's Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking. He has been Chief Technical Officer of three high-tech start-ups, and a member of technical staff at SRI International, AT&T Bell Laboratories, and Microsoft. He has also addressed telecom and e-commerce issues on legislative staff in both the House and Senate of the U.S. Congress, and helped launch a US Government interagency program to assist developing countries with information infrastructure. His research spans technical and policy issues of communications networks, including spectrum management, broadband Internet, wireless networks, video and voice over IP, communications for emergency responders, universal service, secure Internet payment systems, dissemination of copyrighted material, e-commerce, and network security. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford, and a B.Sc. from Brown.
