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2012 Technical Excellence Award Recipients
Dr. Helen H. Kim
For her creativity in developing innovative radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuit capabilities that have solved difficult RF system challenges in a wide range of applications, and for her leadership in helping revitalize RF technology work at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Dr. Helen H. Kim is a Senior Staff member in the RF and Quantum Systems Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Utilizing commercial silicon technologies, she and her team apply novel analog and digital co-design techniques to radio-frequency (RF), analog, and mixed-signal integrated circuits (IC) to meet challenging military requirements. In particular, her team has had success mitigating analog impairments by using digital algorithms.
Since joining Lincoln Laboratory in 2003, Helen has developed several RF, analog, and mixed-signal ICs in silicon (Si) complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) and silicon germanium (SiGe) bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS) for radar, signals intelligence, and millimeter-wave imager applications. She built a strong IC team to demonstrate the superior capability of an RF system-on-chip in Si and SiGe technology for defense applications. Her team's latest effort to apply nonlinear signal processing to nanoscale CMOS overcomes the fundamental problem of analog CMOS. The analog and digital co-design technique achieves high performance at low power dissipation. The four-channel miniature RF receiver that she and her team developed won an R&D 100 Award in 2010.
Before joining Lincoln Laboratory, Helen spent two years at Aralight, a venture-funded startup, leading a team of engineers from design to product realization of a high-density, 36-channel, parallel optical transceiver operating at 120 gigabits per second (Gbps). Prior to Aralight, she was with Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, researching high-speed Si and SiGe ICs for optical and wireless communication. Her analog equalizer circuit was one of the first Si IC solutions to compensate for impairments in optical systems. Her Cartesian feedback transmitter helped improve the power efficiency and linearity of a transmitter in wireless handsets. Her patented work on organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) on Si significantly reduced the very high power-supply voltage required of OLEDs at that time.
Helen has been advising and mentoring graduate students at MIT and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). She earned a BSEE degree from UCLA and MSEE and PhD degrees from Columbia University. She holds 8 patents and has published 17 journal and conference papers.
Dr. Clifford J. Weinstein
For his nationally recognized technical achievements and leadership in human language technology and its applications, and specifically for his contributions in speech recognition, machine translation, automated social network analysis, speech communications in packet networks, and digital signal processing.
Dr. Clifford J. Weinstein is Leader of the Human Language Technology (HLT) Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He is engaged in initiating, leading, and contributing to a wide range of projects focusing on the processing of both speech and text.
Cliff joined Lincoln Laboratory as an MIT graduate student in 1967. His doctoral thesis (done at the Laboratory) includes fundamental early contributions to the analysis of finite word-length effects in digital signal processing. Having served as Leader of the HLT Group and its predecessors continuously since 1979, he has overseen several changes in the group's research and development focuses. He has made technical contributions to and led research programs in speech recognition, speech coding, machine translation, speech enhancement, social network analysis, packet speech communications, information assurance and cyber security, integrated voice and data communication networks, digital signal processing, and radar signal processing.
Cliff has published numerous papers, six of which were reprinted in IEEE Press books. His early work and landmark 1983 paper on packet speech helped lead to Lincoln Laboratory's first IEEE Milestone, awarded in 2011 for "First Real-Time Speech Communication on Packet Networks." Two papers he co-authored won Best Paper awards: one at MILCOM 2004 and one at IEEE Aerospace 2009.
As a U.S. Technical Specialist on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) RSG10 Speech Research Group from 1986 to 1998, Cliff authored a comprehensive report and a journal article on applications of advanced speech technology in military systems. From 1989 to 1994, he chaired the coordinating committee for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Spoken Language Systems Program. As an appointed member of the DARPA Information Sciences and Technology (ISAT) Panel (1999–2003), he co-chaired ISAT studies on "Vigilant High Confidence Systems" in 2001 and on "Automated Intent Recognition on Distributed Organizations" in 2003.
Cliff has served as chairman of the IEEE Signal Processing Society's Technical Committee on Digital Signal Processing and its Technical Committee on Speech Processing. From 1993 to 1995, he served on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1993 for leadership in speech recognition, packet speech, and integrated voice/data networks. He holds SB, SM, and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from MIT.
Publications by Clifford Weinstein