August 18, 2020

Back in December 2019, the TSG Leaders sat down to consider the nominations for the annual 3GPP Excellence Awards, where each Working Group Chair in the project has the possibility to put forward one name to receive acknowledgement for their outstanding contribution during the past year.

No sooner had the 2019 Award totems been manufactured, for presentation at the first Working Group meetings of 2020, then fate intervened and the four secret packages remained with the WG Secretaries unable to deliver them to the WG Chairs, because of the postponement of all face-to-face meetings.

Due to this on-going limbo, it has been difficult to carry out the presentations, but today – at last – we can report that all four 3GPP Excellence Awards for 2019 have now been formally announced to the recipients, via virtual meetings.

The final announcements were made today, with Adrian Escott being honoured at the SA3#100-e meeting and the two CT awards for 2019 being announced at a specially convened e-meeting involving a large proportion of the CT group delegates, to pay a surprise tribute to Christian Herrero-Veron (CT1) and Jesus de Gregorio (CT4).

The RAN4 award, for the excellence of Hiromasa Umeda, had already been announced at an earlier meeting. So, the 2019 roll-of-honour is now complete.

What their Chairs said about the 2019 awardees:

Christian Herrero-Veron - “In recognition of your exceptional commitment to the work in CT WG1. You have played an excellent role in the development of the 5G System phase 1 protocols. Acting as a rapporteur for several Rel-16 work items, you again have taken the responsibility to drive the success of those efforts in CT WG1.” Peter Leis, Chair of 3GPP CT Working Group 1

Jesus de Gregorio – “Your efforts on OpenAPI, to check for correctness and interoperability between the different files provided by CT4, but also for CT3 and SA5 originated files, has been an effort worthy of this award. You are the main driver for the use of the ETSI forge tool, to improve the quality of the 3GPP specifications and the OpenAPI files within.” Peter Schmitt, Chair of 3GPP CT Working Group 4

Hiromasa Umeda - “Your solid knowledge, technical expertise, fair and efficient meeting chairing are well recognized and appreciated. RAN4 has benefited from your contributions on basket WIs approach as well as simplification of specifications.” Xutao Zhou, Chair of 3GPP RAN Working Group 4

Adrian Escott - “In recognition of your technical excellence and your strong sense of integrity and commitment. You have the perfect "security" mindset and your ability to find the flaw and quickly come up with the right solution is truly inspiring. You are a valued member in our group and an important contributor to the work.” Noamen Ben Henda, Chair of 3GPP SA Working Group 3

Contact for this article: Kevin FLYNN, Marketing and Communications Officer, 3GPP