Stevens Prof Kevin Lu Drives Standards Forward

That boy would develop as much as publish pioneering work on optical networks, have an extended profession in telecommunications R&D, and train college students in regards to the rising Internet of Things.

Lu, an IEEE Life senior member, additionally has performed a major function in IEEE’s international requirements growth program. He was honored final yr with the IEEE Standards Board Distinguished Service Award for “superior IEEE SA governance leadership as the IEEE SA Standards Board audit committee chair and as the IEEE SA Industry Connections committee chair.”

Now approaching retirement, Lu displays on his profession, which has gracefully threaded collectively engineering, educating, and volunteerism, with no indicators of slowing down.

Switching from an curiosity in mechanics to electronics

Born in Taipei City, Lu was the youngest of 4 siblings. He says he was influenced by his household and circumstances. His father, a nontechnical administrative workers member at ChungHwa Telecom, the nation’s phone firm, stored the house full of telecom newsletters. Lu says his brother carried out daring chemistry experiments that typically ended with singed eyebrows or small explosions. Kevin gravitated towards mechanical initiatives, comparable to constructing scale fashions of cranes, earlier than ultimately embracing electronics.

“My parents encouraged a career in engineering because they thought it would provide a good living,” he says.

He earned a bachelor’s diploma in management engineering from theNational Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu in 1979. He then attended Washington University in St. Louis, incomes grasp’s and doctoral levels in techniques science and arithmetic in 1981 and 1984.

Kevin Lu [center] exhibits off the plaque commemorating him being honored with the 2024 IEEE Standards Board Distinguished Service Award. He is flanked by James E. Matthews, president of the IEEE Standards Association, and Yatin Trivedi, a member of the IEEE Standards Association Board of Governors.Kevin Lu

A protracted profession with Bellcore

An opportunity assembly on the campus placement workplace led to a job interview with Bell Communications Research, often called Bellcore (previously a part of Bell Labs, now Nokia Bell Labs). He was employed and labored on the firm’s facility in Piscataway, N.J.

The timing couldn’t have been higher. In 1984 the U.S. telecommunications business was present process a large structural change, with AT&T’s divestiture spawning new entities together with Bellcore. His job was “member of the technical staff,” which he took nice satisfaction in, he says, noting that “Nobel laureates held that same title at Bell Labs.”

For the following 28 years, he contributed to initiatives that formed the trendy communications panorama. In 1990 he wrote the seminal paper “System and Cost Analyses of Broad-Band Fiber Loop Architectures,” which was printed within theIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. It advocated for passive optical networks—an idea that’s now central to international fiber deployment.

The street from thought to implementation was lengthy, Lu says.

“It wasn’t until 2009 that Verizon installed a unit in my home,” he says, laughing. “Fiber is expensive, so companies deployed wireless first to build up enough revenue.”

Bellcore ultimately grew to become Telcordia, which Ericsson acquired in 2012. Although Lu had risen by means of the ranks to turn into Telcordia’s chief scientist, he left through the Ericsson acquisition and joined Broadcom. There he labored on cellphone chips and contributed to cell requirements for the third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a world consortium of telecommunications requirements organizations that creates and maintains specs for cell techniques.

After Broadcom exited the mobile baseband chip enterprise, Lu left in 2013, for a job in academia.

An tutorial profession at Stevens

In 2015 Lu joined the Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, N.J., as an adjunct professor within the electrical and laptop engineering division. He grew to become a full-time professor in 2018.

Now, he says, he sees academia as a continuation of—not a departure from—his life’s work.

“The decades I spent in that world give me insights students won’t get from textbooks,” he says.

“When students tell me they’ve discovered their path … that’s the most rewarding thing.”

In May 2019 Stevens honored him with its Morton Distinguished Teaching Professor Award.

He encourages his college students to embrace lifelong studying and develop comfortable expertise alongside technical data. He doesn’t simply train engineering, he says; he works “to help students discover who they are and where they might thrive.”

Although he just lately introduced his intention to retire, the varsity has persuaded him to stay, with the supply of a brand new function, to be formally introduced earlier than the following semester.

“I’ll continue on for at least three more years,” he says.

Involvement with requirements growth

Throughout his profession, IEEE has remained a continuing, he says. He joined in 1980 as a pupil member, drawn by the affordability of dues and publishing alternatives.

His early IEEE involvement was rooted in energy techniques—an echo of his dissertation. His profession within the telecom business led him to turn into concerned with the IEEE Communications Society and the IEEE Standards Association. He served because the society’s director of requirements growth in 2012 and 2013. In that function, he chaired its Standards Development Board. He additionally served on the society’s Standardization Programs Development Board for a number of years.

Lu now chairs the IEEE Standards Board’s Industry Connections committee, which ensures that proposed Industry Connections actions are inside the scope and objective of IEEE. The committee, he says, is “a well-oiled machine.” He has led the group since 2018, and though he has given loads of thought to turning over the reins to a successor, he has stayed on as chair to make sure its continuity.

He additionally has served on the audit, patent, procedures, and new requirements committees.

Even after a long time {of professional} achievement, he says, he stays targeted on studying, mentoring, and constructing bridges between generations of engineers.

What excites him most in regards to the course his profession has taken, he says, is “when students tell me they’ve discovered their career path.”

“That’s the most rewarding thing,” he says. “That’s when I know I’ve done my job. I take pride in seeing them embrace my philosophy of making lifelong learning a daily habit.”