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About ComSoc

This award is named in honor of Harold Sobol, a pioneer in the telecommunications industry and outstanding contributor and leader of the IEEE Communications Society. The award recognizes ComSoc members who have demonstrated exemplary services to the meetings and conferences of the Society.

Prize
Certificate, plaque, and an honorarium of US$1,000.

Eligibility
IEEE Communications Society members having demonstrated exemplary services to the meetings and conferences of the Society over a sustained period of time.

Basis for Judging
Evaluation of candidates is based on such factors as long-term service, significant contributions, strategic planning and financial success, etc. No more than one award will be given per year. The award will not be conferred in any given year if a suitable candidate is not identified.

Presentation
Annually (as appropriate)

Deadline
Nominations due 1 September unless otherwise noted.

 

2023 Award Recipient

Prosper Chemouil

For outstanding contributions to the organization of IEEE Communications Society events on network design and management

Prosper Chemouil

Prosper Chemouil, Life Fellow IEEE, is currently a Senior Research Adjunct in the “Networks and IoT Systems“ Lab at Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (Cnam) in Paris, France. Previously, he was a Research Director on Networks & Systems, and a Chief Scientist on Future Networks at Orange Labs, the R&D Unit of the Orange Group, where he spent 37 years until he retired.

His research interests are with the design and management of new networks and technologies, and their impact on network architecture, traffic engineering and control, and performance. Accordingly, he has been significantly involved in the development of traffic engineering and network management recommendations at ITU-T for 25 years.

For many years, he has been then focusing on cognitive management and network softwarization. In 2016, he has become the Co-Chair of the IEEE SDN Initiative and has been a member of the IEEE ComSoc Industry Communities Board and Industry Outreach Board, representing the SDN/NFV/Cloud area. Within the IEEE SDN Initiative, he launched NetSoft, the IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization, in 2015. He has been involved as the General or TPC co-chair in many events dealing with network design, performance, and management. He has also served as a Board Member, an Associate Editor, and a Guest Editor of various journals, including IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas on Communications, IEEE Networks, and Annals of Telecommunications.

Prosper received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in control theory from École Centrale de Nantes, in 1976 and 1978, respectively.

He was a recipient of several awards, such as the Blondel Medal in 1996, the Ampère Medal in 2003, the Salah Aidarous Memorial Award in 2014, and Arne Jensen Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. He was nominated as French Senior Engineer of the Year in 1995 and became a Fellow of France Telecom R&D in 1998. He is a Fellow of SEE, the French Society of Electrical and Electronical Engineers.

PAST AWARD RECIPIENTS

2022 - No Award
2021 - No Award
2020 - Nelson Fonseca
2019 - Zhisheng Niu
2018 - Xuemin (Sherman) Shen
2017 - Chengshan Xiao
2016 - Merrily W. Hartmann 
2015 - Mehmet Ulema
2014 - Stefano Bregni
2013 - Gerhard Fettweis 
2012 - Hikmet Sari
2011 - Khaled B. Letaief

2010 - Abbas Jamalipour
2009 - Heinrich Stüttgen
2008 - Roberto de Marca
2007 - Raouf Boutaba
2006 - Paul R. Hartmann
2005 - Jaafar M.H. Elmirghani 
2004 - No Award
2003 - Doug Lattner 
2002 - Douglas N. Zuckerman
2001 - Harvey A. Freeman
2000 - Ross C. Anderson