Andrew Viterbi

By AI Staff

Andrew Viterbi is co-founder of Qualcomm Inc., Presidential Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering. (The school is, as you suspect, named for Viterbi. The school bestowed this honor in recognition for his gift of over $50 million to the school.) He earned a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in digital communications from the University of Southern California.

In 1967, he developed the “Viterbi algorithm” which is still used in cell phones today. His algorithm is also used in DNA analysis and speech recognition tools. He co-founded Linkabit in 1968, before he co-founded Qualcomm in 1985. Qualcomm is now a successful, multinational company specializing in chip-making. He is also the president of his venture capital company The Viterbi Group.

For his invention of the Viterbi algorithm, he received a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Information Theory Society, the National Medal of Science, the IEEE Medal of Honor and was a finalist for the Millennium Technology Prize. In 2013, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Most recently, he and collaborator Irwin Jacobs were honored with the IEEE Milestone Award for their Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology and spread spectrum development.

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