Marconi Society names first Institute Award winners

The Marconi Society named the inaugural recipients of its Institute Awards on July 23, 2026, recognizing leaders in artificial intelligence, internet resilience and wireless communications. The winners will be honored at the 2026 Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums in San Francisco in November.

Why it matters: - The first Institute Awards spotlight work the Marconi Society sees as central to responsible AI, broadband access and wireless systems used at global scale. - The awards recognize technical achievement alongside real-world impact in public health, underserved communities and communications infrastructure. - The honorees will be recognized during the 2026 Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums, bringing added visibility to each field.

What happened: - The Marconi Society announced its inaugural Institute Awards on July 23, 2026. - Dr. David Bray received the Marconi Award for Excellence in Artificial Intelligence. - Dr. Pierrette Renée Dagg received the Marconi Award for Leadership in Internet Resilience. - Dr. Hamid Jafarkhani received the Marconi Award for Innovation in Wireless Communications. - The three honorees will be celebrated Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. - The broader 2026 Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums will run Nov. 4-6, 2026, at the same venue.

The details: - Institute Award nominations are judged on criteria tied to each institute’s mission, including technical innovation, real-world impact and leadership. - John Janowiak, president and CEO of the Marconi Society, said the inaugural class reflects work that reaches people in public health systems, unconnected communities and global device standards. - Bray spent more than two decades applying technology at scale, including work on the CDC’s bioterrorism-response information systems and the FCC’s modernization of 207 legacy IT systems to cloud infrastructure. - Bray leads the People-Centered Internet coalition, chaired by Vint Cerf, and co-chairs IEEE committees on AI standards. - Bray’s work has focused on AI governance tied to healthcare, national security and public policy. - Cerf said Bray has bridged AI, agents and digital bots with community-centered, non-partisan action across the U.S. Intelligence Community, the FCC, People-Centered Internet, the GeoTech Commission and the Stimson Center. - Dagg is director of research at Merit Network and a research associate at Michigan State University’s Quello Center. - Dagg has helped build evidence frameworks used to monitor and evaluate broadband policy. - Dagg has also documented community broadband champions working to close connectivity gaps in underserved regions. - Jafarkhani co-invented space-time block coding, a mathematical framework that enabled reliable wireless communication over multiple antennas. - That work underlies mobile cellular networks and Wi-Fi standards used by billions of devices worldwide. - Jafarkhani’s later work includes limited-feedback MIMO and reconfigurable-antenna systems. - Jafarkhani holds 52 patents and has published more than 150 journal articles.

Between the lines: - The Marconi Society is using the Institute Awards to reinforce a broader thesis: breakthrough communications research should translate into social benefit, not just technical advancement. - The three winners span AI, broadband resilience and wireless engineering, signaling that the Society is linking foundational infrastructure work to current policy and deployment debates. - The recognition also elevates researchers whose influence comes through standards, systems design and public-interest implementation rather than consumer-facing products.

What's next: - The Marconi Society will host the 2026 Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums in San Francisco on Nov. 4-6. - Event participation and sponsorship inquiries go to Flora Tromelin at ftromelin@marconisociety.org or +1-480-828-6064. - More information is available on the Marconi Society website. - The Marconi Society also shared updates on LinkedIn.

The bottom line: - The Marconi Society’s first Institute Awards honor three researchers whose work shaped AI governance, broadband resilience and the wireless technologies behind modern connectivity.