Stevens Prof Kevin Lu Drives Requirements Ahead

That boy would develop as much as publish pioneering work on optical networks, have a protracted profession in telecommunications R&D, and train college students in regards to the rising Web of Issues.

Lu, an IEEE Life senior member, additionally has performed a big function in IEEE’s world requirements improvement program. He was honored final 12 months with the IEEE Requirements Board Distinguished Service Award for “superior IEEE SA governance management because the IEEE SA Requirements Board audit committee chair and because the IEEE SA Business 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 employees member at ChungHwa Telecom, the nation’s phone firm, stored the house full of telecom newsletters. Lu says his brother carried out daring chemistry experiments that typically ended with singed eyebrows or small explosions. Kevin gravitated towards mechanical initiatives, resembling constructing scale fashions of cranes, earlier than ultimately embracing electronics.

“My mother and father inspired a profession in engineering as a result of they thought it could present a superb residing,” he says.

He earned a bachelor’s diploma in management engineering from theNationwide Chiao Tung College in Hsinchu in 1979. He then attended Washington College in St. Louis, incomes grasp’s and doctoral levels in methods science and arithmetic in 1981 and 1984.

Kevin Lu [center] exhibits off the plaque commemorating him being honored with the 2024 IEEE Requirements Board Distinguished Service Award. He’s flanked by James E. Matthews, president of the IEEE Requirements Affiliation, 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, referred to 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 trade 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 employees,” which he took nice delight in, he says, noting that “Nobel laureates held that very same title at Bell Labs.”

For the subsequent 28 years, he contributed to initiatives that formed the fashionable communications panorama. In 1990 he wrote the seminal paper “System and Value Analyses of Broad-Band Fiber Loop Architectures,” which was revealed within theIEEE Journal on Chosen Areas in Communications. It advocated for passive optical networks—an idea that’s now central to world fiber deployment.

The street from concept to implementation was lengthy, Lu says.

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

Bellcore ultimately turned Telcordia, which Ericsson acquired in 2012. Though Lu had risen by way of the ranks to change into 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 third Era Partnership Challenge (3GPP), a worldwide consortium of telecommunications requirements organizations that creates and maintains specs for cellular methods.

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 Know-how, in Hoboken, N.J., as an adjunct professor within the electrical and laptop engineering division. He turned 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 many years 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 essentially the most rewarding factor.”

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

He encourages his college students to embrace lifelong studying and develop gentle expertise alongside technical data. He doesn’t simply train engineering, he says; he works “to assist college students uncover who they’re and the place they may thrive.”

Though he not too long ago introduced his intention to retire, the college has persuaded him to stay, with the supply of a brand new function, to be formally introduced earlier than the subsequent semester.

“I’ll proceed on for at the very least three extra years,” he says.

Involvement with requirements improvement

All through his profession, IEEE has remained a relentless, he says. He joined in 1980 as a pupil member, drawn by the affordability of dues and publishing alternatives.

His early IEEE involvement was rooted in energy methods—an echo of his dissertation. His profession within the telecom trade led him to change into concerned with the IEEE Communications Society and the IEEE Requirements Affiliation. He served because the society’s director of requirements improvement in 2012 and 2013. In that function, he chaired its Requirements Growth Board. He additionally served on the society’s Standardization Applications Growth Board for a number of years.

Lu now chairs the IEEE Requirements Board’s Industry Connections committee, which ensures that proposed Business Connections actions are throughout the scope and function of IEEE. The committee, he says, is “a well-oiled machine.” He has led the group since 2018, and though he has given a whole lot 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 requirements committees.

Even after many years {of professional} achievement, he says, he stays targeted on studying, mentoring, and constructing bridges between generations of engineers.

What excites him most in regards to the path his profession has taken, he says, is “when college students inform me they’ve found their profession path.”

“That’s essentially the most rewarding factor,” he says. “That’s once I know I’ve executed my job. I take delight in seeing them embrace my philosophy of creating lifelong studying a every day behavior.”