Biswanath Mukherjee Receives IEEE Award for Research in Optical Networks
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, has announced Biswanath Mukherjee, Distinguished Professor emeritus of computer science at the University of California, Davis, as the recipient of the 2026 Eric E. Sumner Award for his pioneering contributions to optical networks and systems. IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.
The Eric E. Sumner Award, sponsored by Nokia Bell Labs, is bestowed annually by the IEEE Awards Board to an individual or team for their outstanding contributions to communications technology. The award is named for Sumner, who led the development of the first commercial pulse-code modulation system, which signaled the start of the digital era.
“I am very honored, flattered and humbled,” said Mukherjee. “There are so many excellent people who are deserving of this recognition. This award is truly a reflection of the collective efforts of the many people I have worked with.”
“This award is a testament to Professor Mukherjee's exceptional and sustained research contributions and technical leadership in the field of optical networks,” said Dipak Ghosal, chair of the Department of Computer Science. “It is also a recognition of his outstanding contributions to the department and his mentorship of junior faculty both within and outside UC Davis and generations of graduate students and postdocs who have excelled in their own professional fields.”
Mukherjee is renowned for his work with optical networks and security protocols, specifically lightwave networks with the goal of developing novel architecture, protocols and algorithms for the next generation of high-speed networks designed to exploit wavelength-division multiplexing, or WDM, optical technology. He is also known for his research in network intrusion detection, with the goal of detecting network software vulnerabilities and attacks in real time, as well as wireless and sensor networks. He is the founder and president of Ennetix, a startup company specializing in application-centric network analytics.
A prolific researcher, Mukherjee has authored and co-authored over 900 papers, and his graduate-level textbook, Optical WDM Networks, was published in 2006. He has served on the editorial boards of eight journals, including IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and IEEE Network.
Mukherjee joined the IEEE in 1982 as a student member. Now a life member of the organization, he was selected as an IEEE Fellow in 2006 and won the IEEE Communications Society’s inaugural Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in 2015 for his work on shaping the optical networking area.
He joined UC Davis as an assistant professor in 1987. From 1997 through 2000, Mukherjee served as chair of the Department of Computer Science. In 2004, he received the Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award, and in 2005 was appointed to the College of Engineering’s Child Family Professorship.
Mukherjee received the Outstanding Senior Faculty Award from the College of Engineering in 2009, and the Academic Senate Distinguished Research Award from UC Davis in 2019. To date, Mukherjee has graduated 81 Ph.D. students.
Mukherjee earned his Bachelor of Technology degree in electronics and electrical communications engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India, in 1980. He earned two Master of Science degrees — one in computer science and one in electrical engineering — from Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle.
