2015 Bell Labs Prize winners

The 2015 Bell Labs Prize winners were Brandon Lucia of Carnegie Mellon University, the group of George Böcherer, Patrick Schulte and Fabian Steiner from Technische Universität München (TUM) and Stojan Radic, from UC San Diego.

First prize ($100,000) was awarded to Brandon Lucia, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University for his work on OIC: The Operating System for Intermittent Computing. Lucia developed a new class of intelligent computer systems that use novel hardware and software techniques to operate reliably using intermittent or unreliable power. These systems will enable application developers to create high-reliability applications for intermittent systems such as the billions of small devices that will form part of the Internet of Things, and will thereby extend the reach of computing, sensing, and communication technology everywhere and into environments with scarce energy, such as inside the body and in space.

Given the unanimous nature of the winning decisions, the judges presented joint third prize awards ($25,000 each) to two projects. The first was a group of three from Technische Universität München (TUM), George Böcherer (Senior researcher), Patrick Schulte andFabian Steiner (Ph.D students), for their work on a practical method for closing the Ultimate Gap to Shannon Capacity in any communication channel. The other third place winner was Stojan Radic, Professor at UC San Diego, who presented on a ‘Photon-Engine for Clouds’, a novel laser structure that could generate thousands of wavelengths at once.