The Technical Committee on Communications Quality & Reliability (CQR) is an IEEE Communications Society international professional organization that is unique in its service to the quality, reliability and security professionals of the global communications industry.   The IEEE Communications Society CQR Chair Scott Poretsky, honored Addison Fischer, Robert Khan, Henning Schulzrinne and James Seng with the 2019 CQR Chairman’s Award at an awards ceremony during the 2019 CQR International Workshop in Naples, Florida on April 17, 2019.

Criteria upon which recipients were selected include:

  • sustained contributions in the field of Quality, Reliability & Security of communications services, networks, or systems;
  • a demonstration of the core value of a professional society – adding value to others; and
  • integrity consistent with that of a role model.

 

                                                                        Award recipients

Karl Rauscher (CQR Advisory Board), James Seng, Robert Khan, Addison Fischer and Scott Poretsky (CQR Chair)

 

                                         Award recipient

Karl Rauscher (CQR Advisory Board), Carol Schulzrinne and Henning Schulzrinne

2019 AWARD RECIPIENTS

Addison Fischer, Fischer International Systems, USA

For his historic breakthroughs and sustained contributions to advancing the security of modern communications; for his collegial spirit over decades of engagements with peers in the STEM community; and for his role model concern for the welfare of others and taking action.

Addison Fischer, Founder of VeriSign and Fischer International Systems

Addison McElroy Fischer is an American computer scientist, inventor and philanthropist.  Fischer is widely known as one of the foremost computer security and cryptography experts.

Fischer’s career began as a computer entrepreneur when he created his first high-tech startup company in 1973.  He went on to became majority owner of RSA Data Security, which founded VeriSign.  He founded Fischer International Systems Corporation and Fischer International Identity, LLC, corporate software providers to the Global 2000, and Fischer presently serves as chairman of both companies.  Since 1981, he has served as co-owner, with Stanley Druckenmiller, of Duquesne Capital Management until Druckenmiller’s retirement in 2010.

During the 80s and 90s, he was a member of official committees that set U.S. standards for computer security and electronic commerce.  He has addressed the U.S. Congress, by invitation, on several topics, including digital signature standards, proposed FBI digital telephony legislation and global U.S. competitiveness.  From 1995 through 1999, Fischer was a member of the Computer Systems Security and Privacy Advisory Board established by the Computer Security Act of 1987 to advise the president and report to Congress on issues regarding United States computer security.  Fischer’s seminal paper “Electronic Document Authorization,” as well its companion paper “WorkFlow 2020,” laid out many of the innovations, which have since been incorporated into widely-used commercial products such as Java.  Fischer holds numerous U.S. and international patents and is a lifetime member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

In addition to his business interests, Fischer has been an active philanthropist on issues concerning the environment, resources, health and freedom.  Fischer serves as a director of The Jane Goodall Institute and the EastWest Institute, and is on the advisory boards of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Amazon Conservation Team and the Sylvia Earle Foundation.  He holds Mathematics degrees, as well as an honorary doctorate from West Virginia University.

Dr. Robert Kahn, DONA Foundation, Switzerland

For his role as a founding father of the Internet and a trailblazer of the Digital Object Architecture; for his service to countless peers via the introduction of open architecture approaches; and for his role model as a professional in diligence, integrity and humility.

Dr. Robert Kahn, Director and Chairman of the Board of DONA Foundation, Switzerland

Robert E. Kahn is also the CEO of Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), which he founded in 1986.  He received a B.E.E. from the City College of New York in 1960, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University in 1962 and 1964 respectively.  He worked on the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories and then became an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT.  In 1966, he took a leave of absence from MIT to join Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN), where he was responsible for the system design of ARPANET, the pioneering packet switched computer network.  In 1972, he moved to DARPA and subsequently became Director of DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO).  While Director of IPTO, among other things, he initiated the Strategic Computing Program, the largest computer research and development program that had ever undertaken by the federal government. Dr. Kahn conceived the idea of open-architecture networking.  He is a co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols and was responsible for originating DARPA’s Internet Program.  More recently, he has been involved in the development and deployment of the Digital Object Architecture, an open architecture for managing information in the Internet.  Dr. Kahn has numerous publications and has received many honorary degrees and fellowships.  Among his many awards, he is a recipient of the 1997 National Medal of Technology, the 2001 Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, the 2002 Prince of Asturias Award, and the 2004 A. M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery, the 2004 Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He was the recipient of the Japan Prize in 2008, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2018 and was one of the inaugural winners of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2013. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Henning Schulzrinne, Columbia University, USA

For his distinguished innovation to establish the foundations and advance the quality and reliability of the Real-Time Internet; for his industry leadership to standardize internet technologies for global interoperability; and for his strong academic legacy progressing the next generation of computer scientists and engineers.

Dr. Henning Schulzrinne, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Columbia University

Henning Schulzrinne was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the United States Federal Communications Commission, having been appointed to that role on December 19, 2011 to 2014[3] Previously he was chair and Julian Clarence Levi Professor of the Computer Science department at Columbia University. He is a co-chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society.  

Schulzrinne studied at the German TU Darmstadt in Darmstadt, where he earned his Vordiplom (cf. Diplom), then went on to earn his M.Sc. at the University of Cincinnati and his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 1994 to 1996 he worked in Berlin at the Forschungs-Institut für Offene Kommunikationssysteme (GMD FOKUS), an institute of the now-defunct Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD) and now part of the Fraunhofer Society as Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems. Schulzrinne is an editor of the Journal of Communications and Networks.

Schulzrinne has contributed to standards. He co-designed the Session Initiation Protocol along with Mark Handley, the Real Time Streaming Protocol, the Real-time Transport Protocol, the General Internet Signaling Transport Protocol, part of the Next Steps in Signaling protocol suite.[4] Overall, as of November 5, 2015, his publications have been cited over 45,000 times, and he has an h-index of 80.[5]

He was elected to ACM Fellow (2014) for contributions to the design of protocols, applications, and algorithms for Internet multimedia. [6]

James Seng, ThinkerNet Investment Management Co. Ltd., China

For his sustained contributions advancing the quality of multilingual accessibility to the Internet; for his servant leadership in helping and collaborating with industry peers on matters of high international consequence, and for his role model as a peacemaker.

James Seng, Partner at ThinkerNet Investment Management Co. Ltd.

James started his career in 1993 at Technet, the first ISP in Singapore.  He joined his mentor, Dr Tan Tin Wee (Internet Hall of Fame, 2014) where James was involved in numerous pioneering Internet projects, including AsiaOne, Cyberway, and Internationalized Domain Names (IDN).

The latter was spin-off from IRDU with US$24 millions funding from General Atlantic Partners and Verisign in 2000 and James become the CTO of the i-DNS.net.  In the same year, James started the IETF Working Group and become the first Asian to be a Working Group chair in IETF history.  James has attended most of the ICANN meetings since 1999.

In 2003, James was appointed as the Assistant Director of IDA responsible for Next Generation Internet.  His team was responsible for various policy initiatives including IP Telephony, IPTV, Antispam and Social Media for Singapore.

In 2006, James founded Thymos Capital LLP, an early stage investment fund for Singapore technology startups.

In 2008, James joined PPTV in Shanghai as the CTO.  Working hand in hand with the founder-CEO, In 2010, PPTV received US$250 millions investment from Softbank Japan and sold to Suning for US$750 millions in 2014.

In 2010, James founded Video-TX, a Beijing-based Online Video Platform (OVP) which he sold to HiSense in 2013. Video-TX is has become the Jamdeo Cloud which powered all the SmartTV, Tablets and Phones made by HiSense.

2014, James joined 21Vianet Group, Inc (NASDAQ:VNET) in 2014 as its Vice President of Technology Development.

James left 21Vianet to start his own investment firm in late 2015 focusing on China companies and projects.  He also travels extensively for his philanthropic work, dedicated to bring love and peace to the world.