Richard Blahut

Richard E. Blahut is the Henry Magnuski Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A key figure in the Engineering faculty, he joined the ECE department in 1994 after a 34-year career at IBM Federal Systems Division in Owego, New York, where he rose to IBM Fellow in 1980. At IBM, Blahut pioneered passive coherent location systems for U.S. Department of Defense surveillance and established error-control codes for high-speed telecommunications in military helicopters and long-range cruise missiles. He served as Head of the ECE department from 2001 to 2008, building a robust advancement team for alumni and corporate relations, ensuring administrators engaged with donors, and tripling the department's endowment with new endowed professorships, faculty chairs, fellowships, and scholarships. Blahut prioritized recruiting faculty based on intelligence, curiosity, diversity of interests, communication skills, and knowledge of the world. He retired in spring 2014 after 20 years with ECE ILLINOIS, having taught as a courtesy professor at Cornell University—his doctoral alma mater—in 1983 and a semester of electrical engineering at the South China Institute of Technology in 1981 following the Cultural Revolution. He contributed to Illinois's role with the Vietnam Education Foundation in 2003 alongside Associate Professor Minh N. Do, enabling over 50 Vietnamese students to pursue graduate work at Illinois by 2014, and helped secure the lead gift for the new Electrical and Computer Engineering Building dedicated in October 2014.

Blahut earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1972. His research interests include communications, signal processing, information theory, and optical recording, with research areas in coding theory and applications, communications, computed imaging systems, optical communications, and signal processing. He has authored 11 books, including Theory and Practice of Error Control Codes (Addison-Wesley, 1983) and Cryptography and Secure Communication (Cambridge University Press, 2014); teaching aided his writing as he described himself a compulsive writer. Blahut's career honors encompass the IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award (2005), IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal (1998), election to the National Academy of Engineering (1990), IEEE Third Millennium Medal, TBP Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award (2000), IEEE Fellowship (1981), Japanese Society for the Propagation of Science Fellowship (1982), IEEE Information Theory Group Outstanding Paper Award (1974), and IBM awards such as Corporate Recognition Award (1979), Outstanding Innovation Awards (1978, 1976), and Outstanding Contribution Awards (1976, 1968).

Professional Email: blahut@illinois.edu