Erdal Arıkan

In 1981, Arıkan received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He finished his M.S. and Ph.D. studies in Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1982 and 1985 respectively.

Arıkan served as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before returning to Turkey. He joined Bilkent University as a faculty member in 1987.[1]

In 2008 Arıkan invented polar codes, a system of coding that provides a mathematical basis for the solution of Shannon's channel capacity problem.[2] A three-session lecture on the matter given in January 2015 at Simons Institute's Information Theory Boot Camp at the University of California, Berkeley is available on YouTube.[3][4][5] The lecture is also featured on the Simons Institute webpage, which includes the slides used by Arıkan in his presentation.[6]

Arıkan is an IEEE Fellow, and was chosen as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for 2014-2015.[7]

In 2010, Arıkan received the IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award and the Sedat Simavi Science Award for the solution of a problem related to the construction of coding schemes that send information at a rate better suited to the capacity of communication channels. The problem had remained unresolved ever since the field of information theory was first established by Claude Shannon in 1948.[8] Arıkan became the recipient for the Kadir Has Achievement Award in 2011 for the same accomplishment. He was named an IEEE fellow in 2012.[9]

In 2013 he received the IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award for his work in the field of polar coding.

In 2018, Arıkan was selected to receive the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Award "for contributions to information and communications theory, especially the discovery of polar codes and polarization techniques." [10] The same year, it was announced that he would be honored with the 2019 Claude E. Shannon Award.

Huawei presented Arıkan with a special award in July 2018, recognizing "his outstanding contribution to the development of communications technology."[11] The medal symbolizes "the importance of new communications technology in leading the world forward."[11] "As engineers," Arıkan said in his acceptance speech, "there is no greater reward than seeing our ideas turn into reality."[12]