2013 Karlsson Award

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 12 February, 2013 — Brian G. Kiernan, recently retired vice president and chief scientist of InterDigital, has been named the 2013 recipient of the Hans Karlsson Award, which commemorates achievement in computer standards development.

Kiernan was directly responsible for InterDigital's worldwide industry standards activities and assisted in the development of new market, product, and technology initiatives. In this capacity, he provided strategic technical and marketing support to InterDigital's sales, marketing, and business development efforts as well as the company's worldwide patent and licensing programs.

Previously, Kiernan was president of USTC World Trade Corp., an international sales and marketing subsidiary of InterDigital's predecessor company, International Mobile Machines (IMM). Prior to his sales position, Kiernan was IMM's vice president of Engineering and Operations. Before joining IMM, he served as a senior staff engineer at GTE Products Corp., where he generated and evaluated military communications systems concepts.

Kiernan's prior program and technical management experience encompassed TDMA and CDMA voice and data systems, digital and analog switching, and VHF/UHF, and microwave radio. He was also active in communications and non-communications electronic warfare systems development.

Kiernan holds a BSEE from New Jersey Institute of Technology and an MS in management science/operations research from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He has been a speaker at numerous industry conferences, published numerous papers and articles, and holds over a dozen patents.

He was vice chair of the IEEE 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access, past chair of the IEEE 802.16a Task Group on Broadband Wireless Access for Bands from 2-11 GHz, past chair of the IEEE 802.16e Task Group on Mobile Broadband Wireless Access and chair of the IEEE 802.16m Task Group on Mobile Broadband Wireless Access-Advanced Air Interface. Kiernan also served as vice chair of the ATIS Wireless Technologies and Systems Committee Radio Access Networks (WTSC-RAN) subcommittee. He is also an active member of several university industry advisory boards.

Established by the Computer Society in 1992 in memory of Hans Karlsson, father of the IEEE 1301 family of standards, the award comes with a plaque and $2,000 honorarium. It is presented in recognition of outstanding skills and diplomacy, team facilitation and joint achievement, in the promotion of computer standards where individual aspirations, corporate competition, and organizational rivalry could otherwise be counter to society's benefit.

Previous recipients include communications engineer Arthur Astrin; James W. Moore, executive editor of the Computer Society's 2004 Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK); John L. (Jack) Cole of the US Army Research Laboratory, and Paul R. Kroll, IEEE Computer Society Vice President of Technical and Conference Activities.