Médard Elected to National Academy of Engineering

Muriel Médard, Cecil H. Green Professor in EECS, a LIDS alumna and a past LIDS Associate Director (2005-2007), has been elected as a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), “for contributions to the theory and practice of network coding."

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected 87 new members and 18 international members, announced NAE President John L. Anderson today. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,309 and the number of international members to 281. Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature" and to "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education." Election of new NAE members is the culmination of a yearlong process. The ballot is set in December and the final vote for membership occurs during January.

Muriel Médard leads the Network Coding and Reliable Communications Group at the Research Laboratory for Electronics at MIT. She has served as editor for many publications of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), of which she was elected Fellow, and she has served as Editor in Chief of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. She was President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2012, and served on its board of governors for eleven years. She has served as technical program committee co-chair of many of the major conferences in information theory, communications and networking. She received the 2019 Best Paper award for IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, 2009 IEEE Communication Society and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award, the 2009 William R. Bennett Prize in the Field of Communications Networking, the 2002 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award, the 2018 ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Paper Award and several conference paper awards. She was co-winner of the MIT 2004 Harold E. Egerton Faculty Achievement Award, received the 2013 EECS Graduate Student Association Mentor Award and served as undergraduate Faculty in Residence for seven years. In 2007 she was named a Gilbreth Lecturer by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. She received the 2016 IEEE Vehicular Technology James Evans Avant Garde Award, the 2017 Aaron Wyner Distinguished Service Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society and the 2017 IEEE Communications Society Edwin Howard Armstrong Achievement Award. She is a member of the National Academy of Inventors.