Stevens Prof Kevin Lu Drives Standards Forward

That boy would develop as much as publish pioneering work on optical networks, have a protracted profession in telecommunications R&D, and educate college students concerning the rising Internet of Things.

Lu, an IEEE Life senior member, additionally has performed a big position in IEEE’s international requirements growth program. He was honored final 12 months with the IEEE Standards Board Distinguished Service Award for “superior IEEE SA governance management because the IEEE SA Requirements Board audit committee chair and because the IEEE SA Trade Connections committee chair.”

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

Switching from an curiosity in mechanics to electronics

Born in Taipei Metropolis, 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, saved the house full of telecom newsletters. Lu says his brother carried out daring chemistry experiments that generally ended with singed eyebrows or small explosions. Kevin gravitated towards mechanical tasks, equivalent to constructing scale fashions of cranes, earlier than ultimately embracing electronics.

“My dad and mom inspired a profession in engineering as a result of they thought it could present residing,” 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 mathematics 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’s flanked by James E. Matthews, president of the IEEE Standards Association, and Yatin Trivedi, a member of the IEEE Requirements Affiliation 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 Analysis, often known as 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 industry was present process an enormous structural change, with AT&T’s divestiture spawning new entities together with Bellcore. His job was “member of the technical workers,” which he took nice pleasure in, he says, noting that “Nobel laureates held that very same title at Bell Labs.”

For the subsequent 28 years, he contributed to tasks that formed the fashionable 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 highway from thought to implementation was lengthy, Lu says.

“It wasn’t till 2009 that Verizon put in a unit in my house,” he says, laughing. “Fiber is pricey, so corporations deployed wi-fi first to construct up sufficient income.”

Bellcore ultimately grew to become Telcordia, which Ericsson acquired in 2012. Though Lu had risen via the ranks to grow to be Telcordia’s chief scientist, he left in the course of the Ericsson acquisition and joined Broadcom. There he labored on cellphone chips and contributed to cellular requirements for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a worldwide consortium of telecommunications requirements organizations that creates and maintains specs for cellular techniques.

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

A 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 computer 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 a long time I spent in that world give me insights college students received’t get from textbooks,” he says.

“When college students inform me they’ve found their path … that’s probably the most rewarding factor.”

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

He encourages his college students to embrace lifelong learning and develop mushy abilities alongside technical data. He doesn’t simply educate engineering, he says; he works “to assist college students uncover who they’re and the place they could thrive.”

Though he lately introduced his intention to retire, the varsity has persuaded him to stay, with the supply of a brand new position, to be formally introduced earlier than the subsequent semester.

“I’ll proceed on for no less than three extra years,” he says.

Involvement with requirements growth

All through his profession, IEEE has remained a relentless, he says. He joined in 1980 as a scholar 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 trade led him to grow to be 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 position, 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 Requirements Board’s Industry Connections committee, which ensures that proposed Trade Connections actions are inside the scope and goal of IEEE. The committee, he says, is “a well-oiled machine.” He has led the group since 2018, and though he has given a number 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 standards 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 concerning the course his profession has taken, he says, is “when college students inform me they’ve found their profession path.”

“That’s probably the most rewarding factor,” he says. “That’s once I know I’ve performed my job. I take pleasure in seeing them embrace my philosophy of constructing lifelong studying a each day behavior.”