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11.08
Meet the
FCC's New Chief Technologist
By John R.
Platt
Over the next few years, the
United States will face a number of tough
questions regarding the future of
telecommunications, including spectrum sharing,
broadband Internet, delivering services to rural
areas, and the impact of peer-to-peer networks.
One man helping to answer these
and other questions is an IEEE member: Prof. Jon
M. Peha, the new Chief Technologist at the
Federal Communications Commission.
Peha, a Professor of Electrical
Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon
University, was appointed Chief Technologist at
the FCC in October. He also serves as Associate
Director of the Center for Wireless and
Broadband Networking at CMU.
"The most important part of the
Chief Technologist's job is to advise the FCC
Chairman and Commissioners on pressing issues
that involve technology," says Peha. His role
allows him to serve as a senior advisor on
communications technology in the FCC's Office of
Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis.
Building Experience for the
Role
Dr. Peha's career has led him on
a path that fits the needs of his new position.
"I have repeatedly jumped between CMU Professor,
start-up CTO, and government positions," he
says. "In all three worlds, I love trying to
find innovative solutions to complex and
important problems. In academia, you have more
freedom to try things, including wild ideas that
may fail. But in industry, you get to see more
ideas turn into tangible results that affect how
people live."
Prior to joining CMU's
Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Dr.
Peha served as the Chief Technical Officer of
three high-tech start-ups and as a member of the
technical staff at such communications giants as
SRI International, AT&T Bell Laboratories, and
Microsoft.
He also frequently consults for
industry and government agencies around the
world. Dr. Peha has addressed telecom and
e-commerce issues on legislative staff in the
U.S. Congress, and helped launch a U.S.
Government interagency program to assist
developing countries with information
infrastructure.
How did he get to where he is
today? An IEEE role in 1999 helped to shape his
career.
The IEEE-USA Connection
In 1999, Dr. Peha served as an
IEEE-USA Congressional Fellow. Every year since
1973, IEEE-USA has selected two IEEE members to
serve a one-year fellowship, which finds each
recipient appointed to the personal staff of a
U.S. Senator or Congressman, or to the
professional staff of a Congressional Committee.
Why did Dr. Peha decide to apply
for the fellowship? "My Ph.D. at Stanford was
purely technical," he says, "but after I joined
the Carnegie Mellon faculty, I got more and more
interested in doing technical work that could
benefit public policy. After about 7 years of
this, I concluded that if I wanted to have a
greater policy impact, I needed to learn about
policy-making first hand. The IEEE Congressional
Fellow program was a great vehicle for that."
Through the fellowship, "I began
to understand that policy-makers in Congress
(and elsewhere) really need input from engineers
and scientists, but not the kind of input that
typically flows into Capitol Hill. When I later
went back to Carnegie Mellon, I started spending
part of my time trying to fill that void.
"My experience in Congress also
helped me choose areas of research that would
have greater long-term societal impact. For
example, after the tragedies of 9/11, I started
doing research on communications systems for
public safety, including how both design
engineers and Senators could make changes that
would save lives."
His experience in Washington
eventually led to the development of his 2003
book, Science Technology Advice for Congress
(RFF Press). [The fellowship] convinced me that
citizens should demand a Congress that has its
own independent source of unbiased information
on technical issues, and I began to see how that
might be done effectively," says Peha.
"My goal was never to produce a
book. I hoped my co-author (Granger Morgan) and
I could spark a conversation that would lead to
effective action by Congress. The book is just
one of many ways to advance that conversation."
Looking Forward
"The FCC is a place where an
engineer can have tremendous impact on both
policy and technology," says Peha. "Many
products would never have been born without a
complicated combination of technology innovation
and policy innovation. For example, cell phones,
Wi-Fi, and cable modems."
Peha remains a full-time
employee of CMU, where the FCC pays his salary.
Areas of Peha's Carnegie Mellon research program
address topics such as spectrum sharing methods,
broadband networks, communications systems for
public safety, peer to peer networks that
disseminate copyrighted material, and bringing
advanced IT services to rural areas. All of
those topics will play important roles in
discussions at the FCC.
Asked what he hopes to
accomplish with his new position, Peha replies,
"I hope I can help the Commission make good
informed decisions, even on policy issues where
non-engineers sometimes get lost in the
technical complexity."
John Platt is a marketing
consultant and journalist living in Maine. He is
a regular contributor to Today's Engineer.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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