Ralf Kötter
Ralf Kötter (born October 10, 1963 in Königstein im Taunus ; † February 2, 2009 in Munich ) was a German professor in the field of electrical engineering whose work in the field of network coding is of central importance for the development of mobile communication.
Life
Kötter studied electrical engineering and communication technology at the Technical University of Darmstadt . After taking his diploma in 1990, he worked from 1990 to 1996 at Linköping University in the electrical engineering department. There he received a Ph. D. (Teknisk Doktor) degree in Electrical Engineering in 1996 .
In 1996/97 he was visiting scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Laboratory in San José (California), afterwards Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory and Department of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign .
In October 2006 he accepted a chair for communications engineering in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the Technical University of Munich .
Kötter worked in the field of algebraic coding theory and was one of the first scientists to use graph theory to develop codes for error control in graphs. In 2004, he received the IEEE Information Theory Society's Best Paper Award for his work on the decoding of Reed-Solomon codes . In 2008 he received the IEEE Signal Processing Society's Best Paper Award for his work on turbo equalization. In addition, he was awarded the Vodafone Foundation's innovation prize for research in 2008 for his "pioneering work" on information and coding theory. His work on network coding received the Joint Paper Award from IEEE Communications and the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2009 and 2010.
Ralf Kötter died of cancer, leaving behind his wife Nuala and his son Finn.
After his death, the Department for Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois set up the Ralf Koetter Memorial Fund in Electrical and Computer Engineering to support students in the faculty. In February 2011 a special edition of the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Theory was published in recognition of the work of Ralf Kötter.
Awards
- IBM Invention Achievement Award (1997)
- NSF CAREER Award (2000)
- IBM Partnership Award (2001)
- Best Paper Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society (2004)
- University of Illinois College of Engineering XEROX award for faculty research (2006)
- Signal Processing Society's Best Paper Award (2008)
- Vodafone Foundation Innovation Prize for Research (2008)
- IEEE Fellow (2009)
- IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) and Information Theory Society (IT) Joint Paper Award (2009)
- IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) and Information Theory Society (IT) Joint Paper Award (2010)
Web links
- Obituary in the TUM-Mitteilungen ( Memento from January 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 215 kB)
- Obituary of the ECE Department of the University of Illinois (English)
- Obituary of the IEEE Information Theory Society (English)
- Obituary of the information technology company in the VDE (English; PDF; 45 kB)
- Homepage at the Technical University of Munich
- Homepage at the IEEE Information Theory Society
- Special edition of the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Theory in recognition of the work of Ralf Kötter. (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Winner: Innovation Award 2008
- ↑ IEEE ComSoc & IT Joint Paper Award
- ^ IEEE Fellows Directory , accessed February 21, 2018
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kötter, Ralf |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German electrical engineer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 10, 1963 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Königstein im Taunus |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 2, 2009 |
| Place of death | Munich |