Double honours for Lajos Hanzo

This week's graduation ceremony at the University of Southampton sees a double celebration for Professor of Telecommunications, Lajos Hanzo. Not only will Professor Hanzo be awarded a higher doctorate (DSc) by the University for his distinguished lifetime research in adaptive wireless communications systems, but at the same ceremony his son, also named Lajos Hanzo, will receive a First Class Master of Computer Engineering degree.

Over the last 10 years Professor Hanzo has established a reputation as one of the world's leading authorities on adaptive wireless communications systems. He has co-authored ten Anglo-American John Wiley/IEEE Press books on mobile radio communications and multimedia signal processing, and with the rise of mobile multimedia communications his work has become of crucial importance.

'If the wireless Internet is to become a reality, then there are a number of further research challenges which have to be overcome,' says Professor Hanzo. 'The ether is a hostile wave-propagation medium, especially when transmitting the high amount of multimedia information that is needed to create the impression of virtual presence. We are already accustomed to sophisticated services over wires or optical cables, but to create 'tele-presence', transmitting over radio waves, will require a further quantum leap from the current state of the art represented by the mobile telephone.'

To add to the celebrations, Professor Hanzo was last week elected as a Fellow of the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering, a highly prestigious honour, which follows his election last year as Fellow of the IEEE in the United States.

Professor Hanzo held academic posts in Hungary and Germany, before joining the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton in 1986. He was awarded the Chair of Telecommunications in 1998, and leads the Communications research group in ECS, which has many industrial partners.

His son, Lajos, will next year be embarking on postgraduate research, aiming for a PhD degree in mobile multimedia networking at the University of Surrey.