WASHINGTON, D.C. — The FCC has announced the winners of the agency’s Excellence in Engineering Awards, which recognize Commission staff who have made outstanding engineering, scientific or technical contributions.
Julia Tu and Ryan Hedgpeth from the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau share the 2021 Excellence in Engineering award for their work on the Commission’s technical investigation into the nationwide outage of a major wireless network.
“Their efforts will help ensure that rapid, efficient, nationwide radio communications service is available to all the people of the United States,” the Commission said. Their work on the project will help to avoid similar outages in the future, including through recommendations to service providers regarding periodic improvements to network diversity, validation of software upgrades in a lab environment, and active monitoring of 911 network components, the FCC added.
“Every day, the FCC benefits from the immense source of talent working within the agency,” acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said at the September Open Meeting, held last week. “I’m proud to recognize Julia and Ryan for their commitment to using their creativity and ingenuity in service of the public.”
