Kschischang, Frank R.
Professor

Biography

Frank R. Kschischang received the BASc degree (with honours) from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 1985 and the MASc and PhD degrees from the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 1988 and 1991, respectively, all in electrical engineering. Since 1991 he has been a faculty member in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he presently holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Digital Communication. From July, 2015 to June, 2018, he served as the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies.  During 1997–98, he was a visiting scientist at MIT, Cambridge, MA; in 2005 he was a visiting professor at the ETH, Zürich, and in 2011 and again in 2012–13 he was a visiting Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University of Munich.  His research interests are focused primarily on the area of channel coding techniques, applied to wireline, wireless and optical communication systems and networks. During 1997–2000, he served as an Associate Editor for Coding Theory for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and from 2014–16, he served as this journal’s Editor-in-Chief. He also served as technical program co-chair for the 2004 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Chicago, and as general co-chair for ISIT 2008, Toronto. He served as the 2010 President of the IEEE Information Theory Society.

Memberships/Awards

• ECE Departmental Teaching Awards (1992, 2001, 2003, 2008, 2009, 2014)
• University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Teaching Award (2006)
• University of Toronto Award of Excellence – Faculty Award (2010)
• ECE Departmental Service Award (2007)
• Named University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Digital Communication (2015)
• Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award (1999)
• Named Tier I Canada Research Chair (2001, renewed 2008)
• Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (2006)
• Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2006)
• Killam Research Fellow (2010)
• Technical University of Munich Hans Fischer Senior Fellow (2012)
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2012)
• Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (2018)
• Canadian Award in Telecommunications Research (2012)
• IEEE Information Theory Society Padovani Lecturer (2018)
• IEEE Communications Society and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award (2010)
• IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award (2018)
• IEEE Information Theory Society Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service Award (2016)