Pramod Viswanath, an expert in wireless and blockchain technologies, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Viswanath, the Forrest G. Hamrick Professor in Engineering and a professor of electrical and computer engineering, was one of 57 new members honored in a ceremony held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Viswanath’s work in wireless communications and blockchain technology has helped shape the infrastructure underpinning modern digital communication. He was a founding engineer at Flarion Technologies and helped develop Flash-OFDM, a pioneering wireless system that laid the groundwork for 4G LTE networks and faster mobile internet access. He co-authored the textbook “Fundamentals of Wireless Communication,” which has been adopted by more than 60 institutions around the world. His current research focuses on making blockchain technologies more efficient, secure and scalable and the invention of communication algorithms through Deep Learning. Most recently, Viswanath’s research has been towards advancing open-source artificial general intelligence development.
Formed in 2023, the American Academy of Sciences and Letters promotes “scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences and learned professions,” according to an Academy press release. He is one of six inductees from Princeton this year.
Viswanath is an associated faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and a member of the Princeton Center for the Decentralization of Power Through Blockchain Technology. He received the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, and the Xerox Faculty Research Award from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering. He played a key role designing several blockchain technologies, including Prism, a blockchain consensus protocol, and Dandelion, a major contribution to cryptocurrency privacy, and automated information-theoretically near-optimal market making mechanisms including for swaps and parlays. Viswanath earned his PhD from the University of California-Berkeley and was the Gilmore Family Endowed Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining Princeton faculty in 2022.
