Andrew O'Hara
Apple RF engineer Dr. Ding Nie has been named by the Marconi Society as one of four Paul Baran Young Scholars for his work toward increasing throughput in wireless systems.
Dr. Nie has been with Apple since July of 2016 working as a radio frequency engineer tackling issues related to multi-antenna systems. As technology has advanced, so has demand.
Integrating multiple antennas into mobile devices should theoretically increase data throughput, but applying such technology has proven difficult. Dr. Nie helped develop new bounds for multi-antenna systems that are leading to increased throughput and faster wireless communications, according to the Marconi Society.
"Ding is the kind of person that you can let loose on a problem with little guidance and he comes up with very original ideas for solutions," said Dr. Bertrand Hochwald, Nie's doctoral advisor at the University of Notre Dame. "He made a big advance in solving an open problem by coming up with new results that let us apply Bode-Fano bounds to multi-antenna systems"
Other honorees include Dr. Di Che, a Member of Technical Staff at Nokia Bell Labs, Qurrat-Ul-Ain Nadeem, a doctoral candidate at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington.
All four are being honored by the Marconi Society, an organization dedicated to "furthering scientific achievements in communications and the Internet."
Each will receive their awards at the Society's annual awards ceremony on Oct. 2, 2018, in Bologna, Italy.
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11 Comments
Check spelling in the photo credit: "Source: The Macroni Society"
Pretty amazing stuff that folks like Dr. Nie work on. They're on a whole different level of brainpower than I could ever understand. They're in a great career field.
Congratulations on the professional recognition of Apple's Dr Nie. For us consumers, this is a great example of how advanced engineering, new perspectives, and purposeful research can ultimately lead to technical breakthroughs that solve, or at least simplify, decades-old problems. The net result is the practical application of engineering and science into innovative products that we will soon use on a daily basis and largely take for granted. The most immediate benefactors of Dr Nie's work will likely show up in Apple products that bring 5G support to future wireless products. Seeing this caliber of engineer deeply engaged in customer value driven R&D at a consumer products company, as opposed to say a research lab or defense contractor, is fascinating (for me) and demonstrates just how high the bar is now set for designing everyday products that many consumers take for granted. No doubt that Dr Nie is surrounded by many equally gifted and driven colleagues at Apple - and therein lies the essence of Apple's massive market cap and continued success in the marketplace. Apple's success has always been about the quality of the people behind its products, starting with Wozniak and Jobs and continuing unabated with today's current complement of professionals in every discipline at Apple. We'll get to witness some of the results of their genius and hard work tomorrow at 10:00 AM PDT.
Dr Nie's PhD dissertation is available for free download from https://curate.nd.edu/show/jh343r09f94.