The IEEE Medal of Honor, the highest award given by the IEEE, is presented to individuals for their exceptional contributions or extraordinary careers in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The award is sponsored by the IEEE Foundation and comprises a gold medal, bronze replica, certificate and cash honorarium. Flanagan will receive the Medal at the annual IEEE Honors Ceremony on 18 June in Chantilly, Va.

As former director of the Information Principles Research Laboratory at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., Flanagan led researchers to a greater understanding of how the human ear processes signals and was responsible for the development of advanced hearing aids and improved voice communications systems. His work included the development of an electronic artificial larynx, playback recording systems for the visually impaired and automatic speech recognition to help the motor impaired.

Flanagan was one of the first researchers to see the potential of speech as a means for human-machine communication. He has made seminal contributions to current techniques for automatic speech synthesis and recognition and to signal coding algorithms for telecommunications and voice mail systems, including voicemail storage, voice dialing and call routing. He also created auto-directive microphone arrays for high-quality sound capture in teleconferencing and pioneered the use of digital computers for acoustic signal processing.

More recently, as vice president for Research and director of the Center for Advanced Information Processing at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., James Flanagan has been a leader in the development of global systems for human computer interfaces that are actuated by speech and which incorporate sight and touch.

An IEEE Fellow, he is a former president of the IEEE Signal Processing Society and received its Achievement Award. He is also a recipient of the IEEE Centennial Medal and the National Medal of Science, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

He has a bachelor’s degree from Mississippi State University and master’s and doctoral degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in electrical engineering. He has been awarded Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Paris-Sud, and from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

By Rob Thomas