Netravali, Former Bell Labs President, Awarded the 2017 Marconi Prize

On Jun 16, 2017

The Marconi Society, dedicated to furthering scientific achievements in communications and related technologies, will present the 2017 Marconi Prize to Dr. Arun Netravali. Dr. Netravali is the former president of Bell Labs (now Nokia Bell Labs) and leader of pioneering work on video compression standards that served as the key base technology for MPEG 1, 2 and 4 and enabled a wide range of video services including digital TV, HDTV, and streaming video, ushering in a digital video revolution. The technology is used in most TV sets and all mobile phones today.

The Marconi Society, established in 1975 by Gioia Marconi Braga, each year recognizes one or more scientists who – like her father, radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi – pursue advances in communications and information technology for the social, economic and cultural development of all humanity.

The awards ceremony will take place in Summit, New Jersey on Oct. 3, preceded by a symposium at Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, on digital video and its societal impact.

“Few things have had a greater impact on communications in recent years than the digital video revolution led by Arun,” says Dr. Vint Cerf, chairman of the Marconi Society and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. “Everywhere you look, video is transforming the way we communicate on mobile devices and how we consume entertainment and news. Movies, YouTube, live streaming—it is literally transforming how people interact. The next generation of video based on this technology, including virtual reality, promises to revolutionize video consumption, delivery and business models once again.”

Dr. Netravali’s decades-long career at Bell Labs included launching research in video coding and compression in the early 1980s, and HDTV and video networking research in the early 1990s. He helped convince the organization to undertake big system initiatives like HDTV and Softswitch, and his research team proved the viability of HDTV, earning the company a trial with TV manufacturer Zenith. That resulted in the first commercially viable HDTV system. HDTV was a hit with consumers—and a profitable enterprise for AT&T.

During his career at Bell Labs Dr. Netravali took pride in helping promote a highly collaborative approach to research.

“Bell Labs cultivated the brightest minds across many different science and engineering disciplines; it is this diversity that really enables large-scale system development,” he says. “Regardless of one’s role, we knew that the fundamental mission was excellence in communications.” Netravali created a single, interdisciplinary team to develop HDTV and MPEG—a new type of organization where researchers and developers sat side-by-side to deliver new technologies quickly to the market. New research ideas in digital video – based on fundamental research advances – quickly found their way into deployed products.

As president, Dr. Netravali applied the same approach to other research areas at the Labs, including packet networks, fiber optics and all scalable IP cellular networks. He led Bell Labs (Lucent) at a time when it had 22,000 employees and a budget of $3.5 billion, launched 35 ventures, turned out an average of four patents per day, and developed leading edge products in wireless, optical and data communications at record speeds. Professor Victor Lawrence of Stevens Institute of Technology, who led the team that developed HDTV at Bell Labs, says, “Dr. Netravali’s multidisciplinary paradigm created an exciting work environment for both researchers and developers and attracted top talent from around the world.”

Broadcom Scientist Dr. Mehdi Hatamian says Dr. Netravali provided “extraordinary leadership for Bell Labs to continue to remain at the top of worldwide industrial R&D laboratories for communications services and products. This, he had achieved by directing Bell Labs to maximize productivity and reduce time intervals in going from concept to products, to match the highly focused small venture companies around the world. He did this through his exceptional management skills and personal charisma, creating high morale and a sense of satisfaction among talented technologists and proactive business people.”