the development of digital signal pro- cessing software and hardware for wire- less cellular ... al news at the same time, but it was a colleague of Zoran's who ...
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SOCIETY NEWS MILICA STOJANOVIC AND ZORAN ZVONAR BY KATIE WILSON There are and have been many power couples: Brad and Angelina, Bill and Hillary, Siegfried and Roy, Bogie and Bacall. ComSoc boasts its own power couple: Milica Stojanovic and Zoran Zvonar. To our knowledge, they are the first married couple to be elevated to IEEE Fellow in the same year. Both Milica (pronounced Mileetsa) and Zoran (pronounced Zoran) were born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia, now Serbia. They came to the United States together to earn their Ph.D.s at Northeastern University in the late 1980s: Milica’s advisor was John Proakis and Zoran’s was David Brady. Both earned their Ph.D. in 1993 and then went on to postdoctoral positions at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod, where they pioneered methods in underwater acoustic communications. After her postdoc work at Woods Hole, Milica joined MIT, where she became a principal scientist in the Sea Grant program and continued her trailblazing work in underwater communications. In 2009 she became a tenured professor at her alma mater, Northeastern University. Zoran began his industry career at Analog Devices in 1994. While there, he spearheaded efforts in several communication standards including Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), time-division synchronous code-division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) and wideband CDMA (WCDMA). He is currently director of systems engineering at MediaTek (Zoran’s division transferred from Analog Devices to MediaTek). Both Milica and Zoran have been prominent in conferences, journals, and other publications. They also found time to have three children: Ivan, Vanya, and Andreya. Milica’s Fellow citation reads “For contributions to underwater acoustic communications” while Zoran’s reads “For leadership in the development of digital signal processing software and hardware for wireless cellular communication.” I channeled my inner Larry King and sat down with the two of them for an extended interview. Who found out the big news first? Zoran or Milica? We probably received the individual news at the same time, but it was a colleague of Zoran’s who figured the
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timing out. He sent this message: “She got it four minutes ahead of you! You will always be second…” Zoran, however, claims that this is so because of his last name beginning with a Z, which has always kept him last on all lists, including the telephone directory. How did your children react? We never really told them. As part of the annual IEEE Boston Section meeting we were invited to dinner, followed by a concert at the Boston Symphony Hall. Since each person could bring a guest, we decided that instead of bringing each other, we would each bring a child (we have two at home, the oldest is away in college). So the kids heard it officially during dinner, and between that and an excellent concert by the Boston Pops, they had quite a good night out with the IEEE! How did you or how do you plan to celebrate? We invited a professor of ours and his wife for dinner. They are great people with whom we have stayed in touch over the post-school years, as both friends and colleagues, through continued quiet mentoring that always puts forth a challenge, but never restricts the exploration space. Needless to say, there was champagne, enough to make even our cooking look good. How did you two meet? That is a short story. We met at a party. It is also an old story, since it happened more than 25 years ago, in the city of Belgrade, in a country that has since changed its name many times.
To put it in perspective: The year was 1982; that fall, Milica enrolled in the senior year of high school, and Zoran began his freshman year at the University of Belgrade’s College of Electrical Engineering. What brought you to Boston and Northeastern? It is hard to believe, but we arrived on a Pan Am flight. For those too young to have heard of it, Pan Am was the largest airline company of the time. Kidding aside, what brought us to Boston was Zoran’s desire to see the world while doing graduate research. (Milica would have preferred the good life and graduate school in Belgrade, with her parents and friends within easy reach, but not without Zoran, so she came along.) What made us apply to Northeastern University was the fact that John Proakis was teaching there. We were familiar with his book, which for us was the best recommendation of all. So when we were both offered a scholarship from Northeastern, the situation seemed fantastic, and the decision was easy. Little did we know that 20 years later we would be celebrating IEEE Fellowship with him! We were convinced that our choice was right, and we didn’t look back — at least not until November, when the temperatures in Boston plummeted. Alas, by then it was too late to change our mind. Now, we are actually very happy that we didn’t — we then had only a backpack of summer clothes, but we are now back on track with full winter gear, and totally in love with New England winters.
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SOCIETY NEWS Do you ever write papers together? We used to, most productively so when we were postdocs at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. We had more time then, and it was a lot of fun to work together (although criticism at the dinner table can be harsher than any anonymous reviewer’s). We would like to do it again, if for no other reason than to test the alleged benefits of older age. How do you balance work and family? Easily. We tell the children that we are staying late at work. At work, we say that we have to go home to take care of the children. And we go out… That was a joke. Actually, balancing is not that difficult. You simply have to focus on what is important, which is family and work, and not do anything else. So we actually never go out alone. All that we do apart from work, we do with our children. What’s your favorite ComSoc conference memory? Zoran: The first IEEE conference is always sweet: I was still a graduate assis-
tant at the University of Belgrade when I attended Melecon ’87, and memories of Rome linger. The first conference we attended together was a ’90 ComSoc workshop in Ojai, California. I remember listening to a talk about trellis shaping and the Shannon limit, while a World Cup soccer match was simultaneously going on. I will never forget that talk. Milica: There are many sweet memories. One, of course, being meeting you, Katie! In Sweden, many many years ago, at a conference where I went reluctantly because it had the “women in engineering” flavor. Oh, little did I know what fun we would have! (Don’t worry, I won’t say anything else about that.) Milica, your check is in the mail. Favorite hobbies? Hanging out in the mountains. Our favorite place is Jay Peak, Vermont. It is far up on the U.S./Canadian border, in a region called the Northeast Kingdom. We ski in the winter, hike and bike during the rest of the year. Vermont is heaven on Earth for us. We
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also like to read (mystery novels), but there never seems to be enough time for that. What do you enjoy most about your work? Milica: I enjoy math when it is elegant, algorithm design, and the excitement of working with real data when the math in algorithms comes to life. I also love to teach, and to work with students who are motivated. Zoran: I enjoy daily interactions around the globe. They never stop. There is always someone who is awake and willing to discuss the (next) next generation. In the long run, it is all about meeting interesting and smart people, like the ComSoc crowd, learning from them and doing something new. Communications — in the technical sense of the word, and in the extended sense too — are one great thing. We were privileged to witness the transformation of wireless communications, to contribute to it in a small way, and to take advantage of it in a big way — by having great colleagues and friends all over the world.
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IEEE Communications Magazine • November 2010
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