ECE Distinguished Professor Zhi Ding Receives 2020 IEEE Communications Society Education Award
Dr. Zhi Ding, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has just received the 2020 IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Education Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to education and mentorship for the advancement of telecommunication engineering.
Professor Ding has dedicated 30 years of education work to teaching and graduate mentorship in the field of telecommunications. He has an exceptional record of teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels in the past 3 decades, teaching over 100 different classes to several thousand students, mentoring over 30 PhD students and many more masters and undergraduate students. Prof. Ding is the principal author of the world renowned textbook Modern Digital and Analog Communication Systems, 4th edition and 5th edition, Oxford University Press. Ranked by a 3rd party firm Navstem as No. 1 by volume, this textbook is the most up to date among all undergraduate/mezzanine level textbook by presenting a strong foundation of telecommunication engineering and in building the vital link between foundational concepts and the 21st century communication technologies. Professor Ding has an outstanding record of graduate mentorship, having mentored over 30 PhD students with strong diversity. All are highly successful in industry or educational institutions. Prof. Ding’s graduate mentorship has led to the publication of over 200 refereed journal papers and 240 top tier conference papers. Two of his students were winners of the annual Departmental Best Dissertation Prize in 2006 and 2015 at UC Davis.
Prof. Ding has a long history of service. In 2012, he received a Wireless Technical Committee Recognition Award. He was the Technical Program Chair of 2006 Globecom. Additionally, Professor Ding has served as a member and later as the chair of the Steering Committee of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. In 2016, he was also the general chair of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. He currently serves as the Chief Information Officer and Chief Marketing Officer of the IEEE Communications Society.