Arun N. Netravali

Dr. Arun N. Netravali is President of Bell Laboratories, responsible for research and development across all of Lucent Technologies.

A leader and pioneer of many areas of digital technology, Dr. Netravali has led important research and development in high-definition television, switching and networking, image processing, computer graphics, facsimile and graphics communications, digital compression, signal processing, human interfaces to computers, and more. Dr. Netravali’s contributions to image-sequence processing include repeated collaborations with Dr. Thomas S. Huang. Their seminal research has inspired significant developments in both industry and academia.

Born on 26 May 1946, in Bombay, India, Dr. Netravali received his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Rice University in Houston, Texas. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale, in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Prior to joining Bell Labs in 1972, Dr. Netravali worked on problems relating to filtering, guidance, and control for the space shuttle for NASA. Dr. Netravali has been an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has taught graduate courses at City College (N.Y.), ColumbiaUniversity, and RutgersUniversity. He has served on the editorial board of the IEEE, and is currently an editor of several journals. He serves on a number of boards and committees, including the New Jersey Governor’s Committee on Schools program.

Dr. Netravali has authored more than 170 technical papers and co-authored three books: Digital Picture Representation and Compression, Visual Communications Systems, and Digital Video: An Introduction to MPEG-2. He holds more than 70 patents in the areas of computer networks, human interfaces to machines, picture processing, and digital television.

A Fellow of the IEEE and the AAAS, Dr. Netravali is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Tau Beta Phi, and Sigma Xi. He is an advisor to the Ecole Polytechnique Federale, in Lausanne, Switzerland, and to the Beckman Institute of the University of Illinois. For his scientific achievements, Dr. Netravali has received numerous awards, including the Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the L.G. Abraham Award, the Donald Fink Award, the Japanese C&C Prize, and the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award.