Muriel Medard -
is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and a member of the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. From 1995 to 1998 she was a Staff Member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Optical Communications and the Advanced Networking Groups. Professor Medard received B.S. degrees in EECS and in Mathematics in 1989, a B.S. degree in Humanities in 1990, a M.S. degree in EE 1991, and a Sc.D. degree in EE in 1995, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),Cambridge.

Medard's research interests are in the areas of reliable communications, particularly for optical and wireless networks. She was awarded the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award 2002 for her paper, "The Effect Upon Channel Capacity in Wireless Communications of Perfect and Imperfect Knowledge of the Channel," She was also awarded the 2003 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award. The award, established in 1982, is given each year to an untenured MIT faculty member for distinction in teaching and in research of scholarship.