September 25, 2014
Frank Kschischang, a professor in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, has been named a University of Toronto Distinguished Professor. Granted by the office of the Vice-President and Provost for the University of Toronto, he will hold the Distinguished Professorship in Digital Communications for a five-year term, effective January 1, 2015.
Distinguished Professor Awards are designed to advance and recognize individuals with highly distinguished accomplishments, who maintain an extraordinary level of activity in their research and scholarly work and have achieved pre-eminence in their fields. Professor Kschischang’s work focuses on developing innovative error-correcting coding techniques that can be applied in wired and wireless systems, as well as optical networks. He has made seminal contributions in this area. In the late 1990s, he co-invented the factor graph, a type of graphical model that implements an efficient probabilistic-inference algorithm with applications in areas such as error-control coding, signal processing and DNA sequencing. Now a standard tool used throughout machine learning and digital communications, the factor graph has also been implemented in many industrial standards.
Professor Kschischang’s award-winning work on subspace codes for network coding provided an elegant solution to the problem of error-control in communication systems using random linear network coding and introduced a radically new approach to communications in networks such as the internet. His research on optical communications has been equally groundbreaking, attracting attention from leading theoreticians and industrial practitioners. His published papers are influential and highly cited, and he has won several best paper awards.
Professor Kschischang has received many awards and honours in recognition of his pioneering research contributions. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Royal Society of Canada, and garnered a Killam Research Fellowship in 2010. Professor Kschischang is a recipient of the Canadian Award in Telecommunications Research, given biennially to a top Canadian researcher in this area. A member of the first cohort of Canada Research Chairs at the University of Toronto, he was awarded the CRC in Communication Algorithms in 2001. Highly regarded by his peers, Professor Kschischang was elected President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2010. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, the most prestigious journal in his field.
In addition to his research accomplishments, Professor Kschischang is one of the Faculty’s most accomplished and popular teachers. An excellent lecturer who receives outstanding teaching evaluations, he has also contributed to curriculum development. He was a key architect of the “flexible curriculum” and served for several years as chair of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering’s Curriculum Committee. Professor Kschischang has received six departmental teaching awards over the years, as well as the Faculty Teaching Award. His remarkable record of teaching and research was recognized in 2010 with the University of Toronto Faculty Award.
With files from Carolyn Farrell
More information:
Marit Mitchell
Senior Communications Officer
The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
416-978-7997; marit.mitchell@utoronto.ca