Erdal Arıkan Awarded the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, established in 1986, is named in honor of Dr. Richard W. Hamming, who had a central role in the development of computer and computing science, and whose many significant contributions in the area of information science include his error-correcting codes.
Nov 23, 2017

Erdal Arıkan  (S’84–M’79–SM’94) was born in Ankara, Turkey, in 1958. He received the B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 1981 and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in 1982 and 1985, respectively, all in electrical engineering.

Arıkan served as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining Bilkent University as a faculty member in 1987. Since 1987 he has been with the Electrical-Electronics Engineering Department of Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, where he is presently a Professor.

He received the 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Best Paper Award and the 2013 IEEE W. R. G. Baker Award for his work on polar coding. He is an IEEE Fellow and was an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for 2014-2015.

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