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Mung Chiang, Engineering alumnus, wins NSF’s Waterman Award

Chiang completed his doctorate at Stanford in 2003 and now teaches at Princeton. He develops methods for improving wireless networks.
Stanford Engineering alumnus Mung Chiang has won the prestigious Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation. | Photo by Brian Wilson/Princeton University

Mung Chiang, who earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering at the Stanford School of Engineering, has been awarded this year's Alan T. Waterman Award, the National Science Foundation has announced.  

This annual award honors outstanding researchers under the age of 35 in any field of science or engineering that NSF supports. It is the country’s highest award for scientists in that age group. Chiang's achievements will be recognized with a $1-million award, spread over five years, to help further his research.

Chiang develops methods for analyzing the often-complex interaction between layers of wireless networks. His work creates a principled picture of seemingly chaotic interactions and allows for systematic solutions to previously intractable problems.

Chiang completed his PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford in 2003 under the guidance of professors Stephen Boyd and Thomas Cover. He is now a professor at Princeton University whose expertise is in innovative mathematical analyses to design simpler and more powerful wireless networks. 

"It is a great pleasure to honor Mung Chiang with NSF's most prestigious award designed to recognize outstanding young researchers," said NSF Director Subra Suresh. "Dr. Chiang's work links the worlds of theory and practice, and begins to close the gap between what is known today and what might be possible in next-generation wireless networks. His scientific contributions are certain to continue to impact our lives."

Chiang’s research has been applied to wireless network radio resource optimization, Internet congestion control, as well as network traffic routing and fair distribution of resources in cloud computing.

“I'm deeply humbled by this prestigious honor,” said Chiang. “We'll use NSF's support to further develop mathematical languages that crystallize the architectures of network design and then turn the theoretical advances into deployable systems."

A Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Chiang received the institute's 2012 Kiyo Tomiyasu Award. He is also the recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, and the MIT Technology Review young innovator award, called the TR35. He joined the Princeton faculty in 2003.

The Waterman award will be presented to Chiang at an evening ceremony at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on May 9