IEEE Awards Booklet - 2016 - 13

2016 ieee medals

IEEE Medal in Power Engineering

IEEE John von Neumann Medal

Sponsored by the IEEE Industry Applications,
Industrial Electronics, Power Electronics, and
Power & Energy Societies

Sponsored by IBM Corporation

arun g. phadke

Christos H. papadimitriou

For contributions to synchrophasor
technology for monitoring, control, and
protection of electric power systems

For providing a deeper understanding of
computational complexity and its implications for approximation algorithms, artiﬁcial intelligence, economics, database
theory, and biology

The pioneering work of Arun G. Phadke on computer-based
protection equipment for providing precise, real-time data on
power transmission system conditions has provided the backbone
for today's wide-area measurement and control systems used to
ensure power grid reliability and prevent disruptions from leading to large-scale blackouts. Phadke developed synchrophasors
for measuring the flow of electricity through the power grid.
Synchrophasors are time-synchronized numbers that represent
both the magnitude and phase angle of the sine waves found in
electricity and are time-synchronized for accuracy. Phadke also
developed the phasor measurement unit (PMU) for measuring
synchrophasors. PMUs have proven to be the main tool for the
monitoring, protection, and control of the grid and are considered a quantum leap over analog technology, quickly providing
the information needed to maintain grid stability over a wide
region. During the 1990s, Phadke helped develop the concept
of adaptive relaying. Using the computing and communications
capability of computer relays, this concept allows for automatic
adjustment of protective relay characteristics to match prevailing
power system conditions to avoid unnecessary trips of equipment
as a catastrophic power system event evolves. Phadke's efforts on
advancing computer-based protective relaying began in the early
1970s when his implementation of protective algorithms in an
IBM minicomputer and its subsequent installation in a 138-kV
substation near Roanoke, Virginia, represented the world's first
communicating relay and fault recorder. Also, his digital symmetrical component distance relay was a significant contribution
to the distance protection of transmission lines. His early work on
Fourier transforms for voltage and current calculation serves as
the foundation for most of the digital relays installed throughout
the world today.
An IEEE Life Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Phadke is a University Distinguished Research Professor with the Faculty of Engineering at the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg,VA, USA.

Christos H. Papadimitriou is a leader in providing an understanding of how computational complexity can be used as a tool for
understanding limits and solving problems within the broader
scientific community, pioneering connections and collaborations
between computer science and other disciplines. Papadimitriou
has been the key player in the development of our understanding of "NP total search problems," which are computational challenges where solutions are guaranteed to exist but may be hard to
find. He has been very influential in developing algorithmic game
theory, which involves the convergence of computer science and
economic theory. His work on computing and determining the
computational complexity of the Nash equilibrium has provided
important insights for game theory and economics. He studied
the algorithmic complexity of computing game-theoretic solutions to cooperative and noncooperative game scenarios, which
has had important implications for economics and gauging the
health of the Internet amid the risks caused by congestion. He
defined the "price of anarchy," which provides a measure of the
degree of inefficiency of equilibrium in a game, and is important for quantifying loss due to uncoordinated behavior of selfish
agents within networks such as the Internet. Papadimitriou has
also demonstrated how computational complexity can be applied
to natural processes such as biology, describing the algorithmic
aspects of protein structure. His novels Turing and Logicomix have
been very successful in reaching the broader public and exposing
many people to some of the fundamental principles and ideas of
mathematics and computer science.
A member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and an ACM Fellow, Papadimitriou is the C. Lester
Hogan Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Scope: For outstanding contributions to the technology associated
with the generation, transmission, distribution, application, and
utilization of electric power for the betterment of society.

Scope: For outstanding achievements in computer-related science
and technology.

13 | 2016 IEEE AWARDS BooKLET

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2016