Netravali Blazes Trails at Bell Labs

In June of last year, Arun Netravali ’69 stood in the East Room of the White House and received from President George W. Bush the U.S. National Medal of Technology, the nation’s highest honor for achievement in technology.

Extending his hand to congratulate him, President Bush smiled and said, “You look awfully young to be receiving an award like this.” Netravali, 56, nodded politely and said, “Yes, sir.” As chief scientist at Lucent Technologies and former president of the company’s famed Bell Labs, Netravali had figured he might one day win the award, but not this soon in his career. “It was a big surprise,” he says. “And very humbling.”

The National Medal of Technology honors those who embody the American spirit of innovation and have advanced the nation’s global competitiveness. Netravali was cited for his “pioneering contributions that transformed television from analog to digital, enabling numerous integrated circuits, systems, and services in broadcast television, cable television, direct broadcast satellite, high-definition television, and multimedia over the Internet; and for technical expertise and leadership, which have kept the Bell Labs at the forefront in communications technology.”

Netravali led the development of high-definition television (HDTV) technology at Bell Labs in the 1990s. A video encoder based on his work is used today by hundreds of television stations for their HDTV broadcasts. In 1997, he received an Engineering Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his work on HDTV. His innovations in compression technology have enabled the development of video telephones, videoconferencing systems, streaming video over the Internet, stored compressed video at websites, and multimedia computers. He holds more than 70 patents in the areas of computer networks, human interfaces to machines, picture processing, and digital video and television. He also has authored more than 170 technical papers and co-authored three books on digital technology.

Netravali served as president of Bell Labs from 1999 to 2001. Under his leadership, Lucent dramatically improved its ability to move innovations from the lab to marketplace. Now as Lucent’s chief scientist, he works with academic and investment communities to identify important new networking technologies, and he advises Lucent’s senior management on technical and customer issues.

Growing up in India, Netravali never imagined he’d have such an impact on America and its communications technology. A bright student, he graduated with honors from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay in 1967. The dictum of the times for engineering school grads was “Go west, young man,” since jobs were scarce in India. He was accepted to Rice and stayed three years, earning his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering.

“ When I first arrived at Rice, I was just a kid,” he recalls, “but the welcome I got from everyone there was absolutely extraordinary. In life, you always look at how you’re enriching your experiences, what you’re learning, and the quality of people that you surround yourself with. Rice was a wonderful step up. The electrical engineering faculty and the students I went to class with were at the high end of the spectrum.”

Netravali finds a dramatic new openness at Rice nowadays and when asked if the school can do for Houston what Stanford has done for Silicon Valley, he responds, “Absolutely.” He is impressed with Rice’s focus on nanoscale science, information technology, biomedicine, and environmental science. “These are very hot areas,” he enthuses. “This is where I believe the next generation of millionaires is going to come from. Businesses in these areas will be huge.”

Netravali says he’s “proud of being a Rice product” and has seen firsthand how Rice grads have benefited Bell Labs, with nearly 10,000 research-and-development employees worldwide. “At Lucent Technologies, there are quite a few Rice grads,” he adds, “but not as many as I would like!”