John S. Mayo

John Sullivan Mayo (born February 26, 1930) is an American engineer, AT&T executive and seventh president of Bell Labs, known from contributions to the computer and telecommunications industry.^[1][2]

Biography

Born in Greenville, North Carolina, he earned B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University.

Following this, Mayo joined Bell Labs, now Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, (1955) where he first worked on early computers as the Triadic and Leprechaun, the Telstar satellite, ocean sonar systems and various switching systems. He was elected vice president at Bell Labs (1975) and eventually became the seventh president (1991)^[3] until his retirement (1995). He is credited with globalizing Bell Labs and forging closer ties between its research and development and business units.^[4]

Awards

• IEEE Fellow (1967).
• Outstanding Engineering Alumnus of North Carolina State University (1977).^[5]
• With Eric E. Sumner and M. Robert Aaron he won the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal (1978) and the Computer and Communications Society Koji Kobayashi Award (1988) for the pioneer work on T-1.
• Elected to the National Academy of Engineering (1979).
• National Medal of Technology award (1990) for providing the technological foundation for information age communications and for overseeing the conversion of the national switched telephone network from analog to digital-based technology.
• The Industrial Research Institute (IRI) Medal (1992).
• Engineering Manager of the Year by the American Society for Engineering Management (1992).
• American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) Chair’s Award (2010).^[6]

References

1. New president named at Bell Labs from New York Times (July 2, 1991).
2. biography from IEEE
3. presidential page from Lucent
4. TheProfessionalEngineer.com
5. from ncsu.edu
6. TheProfessionalEngineer.com

External links

• John S. Mayo Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award Recipient — 1977