WASHINGTON D.C.—During the annual NextGen Broadcast Conference this week, the ATSC honored Dr. Sung-Ik Park of Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) with the organization’s Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal and presented Ali Dernaika of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) with the Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award.
Named for the legendary former ATSC president who led the organization for two decades spanning both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0, the Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal recognizes an individual or team that demonstrates exemplary leadership in advancing the mission of ATSC and epitomizes the vision, tenacity, and leadership qualities that were the hallmark of his leadership.
“Sung-Ik Park has the vision to understand how to move technology forward,” said ATSC President Madeleine Noland. “He has the tenacity to overcome obstacles in his path. And he has the leadership to build great teams to successfully execute on his plans, furthering the broadcasting ecosystem, and ATSC 3.0 in particular. You may think of Dr. Park as a person tirelessly supporting the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer proposal in Brazil. Together with his colleagues at ETRI and CleverLogic, this is a major ongoing effort. But it’s important to understand that his contributions to ATSC span many years and many projects. In addition to the Brazil project, Sung-Ik has been very influential for ATSC’s efforts in the International Telecommunications Union.”
As a leader within ETRI, Dr. Park and his team have been continually developing ATSC prototypes, running field experiments, organizing exhibits at the NAB Show and other venues. “In fact, he is just back from Delhi where he demonstrated the efficiency of ATSC 3.0 as a mobile service choice,” Noland added that “he has made multiple trips to Brazil, sent countless correspondences to the labs in Brazil, stayed up many late nights with his team to support the equipment – all to ensure ATSC 3.0 performs to its fullest potential. ATSC is grateful and it is our pleasure to recognize Sung-Ik with the 2024 ATSC Richer Leadership Medal.”
The Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award is bestowed once a year to an individual representative of the ATSC membership whose technical and leadership contributions to ATSC have been invaluable and exemplary. The Lechner Award recognizes the first recipient, the late Bernard Lechner, for his outstanding service to the ATSC. Lechner was the retired Staff Vice President, Advanced Video Systems of RCA Laboratories. His 30-year career at RCA covered all aspects of television and display research.
2024 Lechner Award honoree Ali Dernaika serves as Co-Chair of ATSC Specialist Group S43, with his work revolving around broadcast core technologies and the formulation of Broadcast Core Network standard.
“Broadcast Core Network is a central technology for developing datacasting businesses,” said Noland. “You can think of it like the ‘AirBnB’ of renting spectrum capacity. Broadcasters may have some available bandwidth some of the time – like a room in a house that’s not always in use. And enterprise customers may wish to temporarily use this capacity for sending files, media or other data – like booking a room. Broadcast Core Network is the platform that connects broadcasters who have available spectrum with enterprise customers seeking a cost-effective way to distribute data. But that description is just the tip of the iceberg. With Broadcast Core Network, the world of broadcast collided with the networking world.”
“Working on this new concept, Ali took on the role of educator, patiently helping ATSC members understand not just the big picture, but also the details of how core networks function, what they do, and how a successful platform could be designed – not to mention greatly expanding everyone’s acronym vocabulary!” Noland continued. “Before his work, Broadcast Core Network was a foreign concept, and now it's becoming part of the vernacular among our membership and beyond.”
Dernaika is a senior solution architect, specializing in digital video services within HPE’s Communications Technology Group. His expertise has been instrumental in shaping TV service architectures and deployments, encompassing the entire spectrum from linear TV to interactive services across multiple systems. Presently, his focus centers on driving digital transformation through the adoption of cutting-edge IT and virtualization technologies, harnessing the power of IT cloud solutions. Ali is currently based out of Dubai, UAE where he lives with his wife and 2 children.
Dr. Park and Dernaika join a distinguished cadre of industry luminaries honored by ATSC over the years.
Lechner Award recipients include:
- 2000 – Bernard Lechner, Consultant
- 2001 – Rich Chernock, Triveni Digital
- 2002 – Regis Crinon, Microsoft
- 2003 – Glenn Adams, Extensible Formatting Systems, Inc
- 2004 – Graham Jones, National Association of Broadcasters
- 2005 – John Henderson, Hitachi
- 2006 – Art Allison, NAB
- 2007 – Mark Eyer, Sony Electronics
- 2008 – Michael Dolan, TBT
- 2009 – Wayne Bretl, Zenith/LG Electronics
- 2010 – Pat Waddell, Harmonic
- 2011 – Jim Starzynski, NBC Universal
- 2012 – S. Merrill Weiss, MWG Group
- 2013 – Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group
- 2014 – James Kutzner, PBS
- 2015 – Luke Fay, Sony
- 2016 – Madeleine Noland, LG Electronics
- 2017 – Skip Pizzi, NAB
- 2018 – Mark Corl, Triveni Digital
- 2019 – Adam Goldberg, AGP/Sony
- 2020 – Jae-Young Lee, ETRI
- 2021 – Alan Stein, InterDigital
- 2022 – Youngkwon Lim, Samsung Electronics
- 2023 – Glenn Reitmeier, NBC Universal/Sarnoff Labs
- 2024 – Ali Dernaika, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- Richer Medal recipients:
- 2019 – Mark Richer
- 2020 – The Phoenix Model Market
- 2021 – Sen. Gordon Smith, NAB
- 2022 – Sony Electronics
- 2023 – Saankhya Labs
- 2024 – Dr. Sung-Ik Park, ETRI
Richer Medal recipients:
- 2019 – Mark Richer
- 2020 – The Phoenix Model Market
- 2021 – Sen. Gordon Smith, NAB
- 2022 – Sony Electronics
- 2023 – Saankhya Labs
- 2024 – Dr. Sung-Ik Park, ETRI
