Verdu honored for contributions to information theory

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has honored Sergio Verdu with the 2008 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal "for fundamental contributions to information theory and the development of multi-user detection."

The award will be presented Sept. 20 at the 2008 IEEE Honors Ceremony in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.

Verdu is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and is affiliated with the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign and has been a member of the University faculty since 1984. His areas of research include data compression, data transmission and the interface between information theory and estimation theory.

Verdu was the 2007 recipient of the IEEE Information Theory Society's highest honor, the Claude E. Shannon Award. An IEEE fellow and member of the National Academy of Engineering, Verdu also has received the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, five IEEE paper awards and the Frederick E. Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education.