2009 Hall of Fame Recipients [print page]
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Robert E. Berry
A pioneer in the space industry, Robert E. Berry is Chairman Emeritus and Systems Fellow of Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), a Palo Alto company that designs and manufactures high-power commercial satellites for television broadcast, satellite radio, broadband Internet and a variety of mobile communications applications. Mr. Berry was general manager of Ford Aerospace’s Space Systems Division from 1977 until 1990, when the company became Space Systems/Loral (SS/L). At that time, he was named president and he was named chairman in 1999. He was also Senior Vice President of parent company Loral Space & Communications.
Under Mr. Berry’s leadership Space Systems/Loral developed some of the world’s most innovative communications and meteorological satellite projects for defense, civil and commercial applications and he played an important role in growing what is today’s commercial satellite industry.
Mr. Berry has been distinguished by numerous honors. In 2007 he was inducted into the SSPI Hall of Fame and he received the ISCe Lifetime achievement award. In 2003 he received the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation’s lifetime achievement award for leadership and creative engineering and management in the design and launch of more than 170 satellites. In 1999 he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and in 1996 he received the AIAA’s Aerospace Communications Award.
Under his direction SS/L pioneered space borne high power energy management technology, culminating in applications for direct broadcast and multipurpose satellites and the 125 kW system for the International Space Station. Known for his willingness to push innovative concepts, he also directed SS/L’s industry leading development of three- axis stabilization and multiple beam and shaped beam antenna applications.
Mr. Berry is a member of the AIAA, the IEEE, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, and NSIA. In addition to his role as a member of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Space Systems Technology Advisory Committee for NASA, Berry served under Gerald Ford as a Deputy Director of Defense Research & Engineering. He holds a B.S. degree from Manhattan College and a master’s degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Sung-Mo “Steve” Kang, Ph.D.
Steve Kang serves as Chancellor of the University of California, Merced, founded in 2005 as the first public research university of the 21st century. He leads development of academic and research programs in emerging areas of global importance. Enrollment has more than doubled in the last two years, attracting students from throughout California, the nation, and abroad. He is focusing on developing strong programs which will contribute to addressing challenges confronting society.
Previously, he served as Dean of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, and built strong collaborative programs — NASA’s University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) in bio-info-nanotechnologies with $330 million in funding; research programs with Silicon Valley high tech companies; NSF Engineering Research Center for Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems (BMES) with Caltech and USC; California Institutes for Science and Innovation, specifically QB3 and CITRIS; and the NSF Developing Effective Engineering Pathways (DEEP) program with Foothill DeAnza Colleges. Also, he served as President of the Silicon Valley Engineering Council (SVEC).
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he advised more than 50 Ph.D. graduates. Many are now active in Silicon Valley. Until 1985, he was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, leading the development of the world's first 32-bit CMOS microprocessor chips and also working on planning of private network services.
Dr. Kang holds 15 U.S. patents and has written or co-authored nine books and more than 350 technical papers, and won numerous awards. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded a fabless mobile memory chip design company named ZTI, originally in Sunnyvale, now in San Jose.
Dr. Kang earned his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley; a master of science degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo; and a bachelor of science degree, graduating summa cum laude, from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ. All his academic degrees are in electrical engineering.
Meyya Meyyappan, Ph.D.
Meyya Meyyappan is Chief Scientist for Exploration Technology at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. He joined NASA Ames in 1996 and the following year, started the NASA Ames Center for Nanotechnology (NACNT). Dr. Meyyappan was a founding member of the Interagency Working Group on Nanotechnology(IWGN) established by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The IWGN was responsible for putting together the US National Nanotechnology Initiative.
Dr. Meyyappan served as the Director of the NACNT until 2006 and the Center had about 65 scientists and engineers, in addition to students and visiting scholors, working on various aspects of nanotechnology including carbon nanotubes, nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, computational nanotechnology, chemical and bio sensors, flight instrumentation, detectors, optoelectronics and related areas. The focus was to investigate the benefits of nanomaterials for miniaturization of science payload and affordable space missions. The Center was a prolific contributor to the nanotechnology literature through publications and inventions and has been one of the most recognized and praised activities in nanotechnology in the world.
Dr. Meyyappan’s research interests are in the areas of carbon nanotubes and inorganic nanowires for various applications in electronics, opteoelectronis, sensors and instrumentation. He has authored or co-authored over 175 articles in peer-reviewed journals and made over 200 Invited/Keynote/Plenary Talks in nanotechnology subjects across the world.
Dr. Meyyappan has been recognized by his peers for his scientific contributions. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Electrochemical Society (ECS), AVS, and the California Council of Science and Technology. He is the IEEE Nanotechnology Council Distinguished Lecturer on Nanotechnology, IEEE Electron Devices Society Distinguished Lecturer, and ASME’s (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Distinguished Lecturer on Nanotechnology (2004-2006). He served as the President of the IEEE’s Nanotechnology Council in 2006-2007.
For his contributions and leadership in nanotechnology, he has received numerous awards including: a Presidential Meritorious Award; NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal; Arthur Flemming Award given by the Arthur Flemming Foundation and the George Washington University; 2008 IEEE Judith Resnick Award; IEEE-USA Harry Diamond Award; AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum Award. For his educational contributions, he has received: Outstanding Recognition Award from the NASA Office of Education; the Engineer of the Year Award (2004) by the San Francisco Section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA); IEEE-EDS Education Award.
Jimmy Kazuhiro Omura, Ph.D.
A native son of Silicon Valley, Dr. Jim Omura was born on a strawberry farm in Campbell and spent three early years in a Japanese American relocation camp in Wyoming during WW II. Except for fifteen years as a UCLA professor of Electrical Engineering, his career has been in Silicon Valley.
Jim worked on early digital radio communication systems at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park. While at SRI he proved the optimality of the Viterbi Algorithm for decoding convolutional codes. This work, based on Dynamic Programming applications to communication systems first used in his Ph.D thesis, is very general and included all finite memory systems including communication links with intersymbol interference. In 1969 he joined the faculty at UCLA where he published over 100 papers, directed the research of 22 Ph.D students, and co-authored books Principles of Digital Communication and Coding (co-authored with Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm) and Spread Spectrum Communications, vol I, II, and III.
In 1984 Jim returned to Silicon Valley where he founded the Cylink Corporation which became the leader in providing data encryption systems for enterprise networks. In 1989 he designed some of the first direct sequence spread spectrum digital radios for the wireless metropolitan area network market. Cylink became the market leader for unlicensed FCC Part 15 digital radios which later led to the WiFi standard and today’s widespread wireless access applications. Cylink had an IPO in 1996.
Starting as a volunteer in 2001, Dr. Jim Omura now works part-time for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Palo Alto where he manages Science grants focused in astronomy, open access scholarly publication systems, and technologies for environmental applications.
During his UCLA years, he was a visiting professor in Australia and Brazil. He enjoys scuba diving, jogging, hiking and has traveled extensively through Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East to market Cylink wireless products in developing countries. He obtained BS and MS degrees from MIT in 1963 and a Ph.D. degree from Stanford in 1966, all in Electrical Engineering.