Tadahiro Sekimoto

Over the past half-century, Dr. Tadahiro Sekimoto has contributed significantly to the enormous growth of the NEC Corporaton and Japan’s electronics industry. Highly successful in developing commercial applications, his seminal work in digital and satellite communications formed the cornerstone for modern communications systems. His push to integrate computers and communications, an idea proposed in 1977 by then-chairman Dr. Koji Kobayashi, helped to establish the information technology industry and a worldwide information society.

From 1948 to 1965, Dr. Sekimoto developed innovative communications technology at NEC’s Central Research Laboratories in Tokyo. He designed early pulse-code modulation equipment as well as coding and decoding circuitry. During the late 1960s, he developed a time-division multiple access system and automatic routing system that had a huge impact on satellite communications. These technologies also formed a foundation for cellular telephony decades later. During a two-year assignment at COMSAT in Washington, D.C. from 1965 to 1967, he led the development of single-channel-per-carrier pulse-code-modulation multiple-access demand-assignment equipment (SPADE). Commercialized by Intelsat in the early 1970s, SPADE made it economically feasible for developing countries to participate in worldwide satellite communications networks.

Dr. Sekimoto was elected to the board of directors in 1974 and appointed president in 1980. He guided the company’s colossal sales growth from 893 billion yen (US$4.7 million) in 1980 to 2,899 billion yen (US$30.5 million) in 1993. During his tenure, the company consistently ranked among the top five worldwide in communications, computer and semiconductor sales. NEC also established three overseas laboratories and 33 plants in 16 countries, as well as basic research facilities in Tsukuba, Japan and Princeton, New Jersey. Named chairman of the board in 1994, Dr. Sekimoto is currently chairman of the Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies, an NEC think tank subsidiary.

An IEEE Life Fellow, Dr. Sekimoto is a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. His awards include the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the IEEE Communication Society’s Edwin Howard Armstrong Award, the American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics’ Aerospace Communications Award and the Emperor of Japan’s Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure. The author of numerous technical publications and seven books, he holds 35 Japanese patents and five patents issued overseas.