SCHAUMBURG, Ill. - 30 November 2005 - As recipient of the 2004 National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor for technological innovation awarded earlier this month, Motorola understands the importance of recognizing excellence in technology. In this spirit, Motorola today announces the recipients of its highest honor for technological innovation, the Dan Noble Fellow.
Named for the company's first chief technology officer, the Dan Noble Fellow has been awarded for the past 35 years to a very select group of technologists. Representing less than 0.1% of the company's 25,000 engineers, this year's recipients are recognized as subject matter experts in diverse fields such as human interaction, encryption, radio frequency, software, and network technologies, among others.
"Dan Noble Fellows are the technology pathfinders to Motorola's future - it is through the extraordinary work of these world-class scientists and technologists that Motorola will enable its vision of seamless mobility," said Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology Officer, Motorola. "We are proud of the broad impact of their technical contributions to Motorola and look forward to the industry and world-changing innovations to come."
The nine technologists awarded this year represent all Motorola businesses and the list includes the first Fellow from China, reflecting that country's growing importance as an R&D hub. The 2005 Dan Noble Fellows are:
Rich Bickham (Schaumburg, IL): An expert in RF design with an emphasis on RF power whose work has enabled multiple generations of high power radio transmitter architectures for both mobile and infrastructure applications.
Michael Bright (Schaumburg, IL): A technical authority on cryptographic circuits, system security and delivery services enabling encryption processes.
Casey Hill (Schaumburg, IL): With 33 patents to his credit, Casey Hill now spearheads Motorola's Intellectual Property strategy and development programs.
Dr. Jian-Cheng Huang (Shanghai, China): As Director of Motorola China Research Center, Jian-Cheng leads human interaction technologies including synthetic speech, automatic speech recognition, handwriting recognition, and image understanding.
Chris Larosa (Libertyville, IL): An innovation leader in hardware and communications systems whose recent work has been pivotal to Motorola's technical superiority in 3G.
Dr. Jyh-Han Lin (Plantation, FL): A Motorola Master Innovator with 29 patents and a technical leader in Java and Linux platform technology, standards, and product initiatives.
Dr. Bob O'Dea (Plantation, FL): Director of X-Internet Research for Motorola Labs championing a leadership position for Motorola in connecting the physical and IP worlds.
Al Von Ruff (Champaign, IL): A senior software architect who created and deployed Motorola's software simulation technology, enabling the development of cellular handset software without the need for hardware.
Dr. Robert Yacobellis (Schaumburg, IL): Championed Motorola's efforts in software process and quality resulting in the formation of Motorola's Global Software Group and the company's first SEI Level 5 organization in Bangalore, India.
More about Dan Noble and the Dan Noble Fellows
Professor Daniel E. Noble joined Motorola in 1940 to help build the company into a communications business. Dr. Noble is credited with designing the first FM mobile communications system in the world and being the first to propose the world famous walkie-talkie back-pack radio, a key contributor to communications during World War II. In 1941, Professor Noble became Motorola's Chief Technologist.
In 1970, Dr. Noble and Bob Galvin formed Motorola's Science Advisory Board, an internal organization formed from approximately the top 2% of Motorola's engineering community, and introduced the Dan Noble Fellow award to recognize technologists for outstanding technical contributions to the company. The company has honored more than 150 Motorolans in the award's 35 year history.
