Debasis Mitra (born November 3, 1944 in

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

) is an Indian-American mathematician, known for his numerous contributions to the theory of communication systems,

control theory Control theory is a field of mathematics that deals with the control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the application of system inputs to drive the system to a ...

and

queueing theory Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues. A queueing model is constructed so that queue lengths and waiting time can be predicted. Queueing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because the ...

. He got his

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

(1964) and

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

(1968) in electrical engineering from

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degre ...

, on an ''Atomic Energy Research'' fellowship (1965–67), while he was simultaneously affiliated with the ''Control systems center'' at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...

. His work focused on control of

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced ...

systems. He then joined

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

as a member of the technical staff (1968), working on

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...

networks,

diffusion Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical p ...

models for service adoption and

traffic modeling A traffic model is a mathematical model of real-world traffic, usually, but not restricted to, road traffic. Traffic modeling draws heavily on theoretical foundations like network theory and certain theories from physics like the kinematic wave mo ...

. Mitra was head of ''Mathematics of Networks and Systems'' research division (1986–99), and was

vice president A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is o ...

of the ''math and algorithmic science center''. Mitra has served as editor and as part of the editorial board of numerous scientific publications, and was visiting professor at

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Fran ...

(1984). In 2003, Mitra was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

for his "contributions to the modeling, analysis and design of communication networks." He retired from Bell Labs in 2013 and joined th
Columbia University
Electrical Engineering department. His current research interests are in the scientific foundations of policy that impact engineers and engineering systems, especially in models, analyses and syntheses of organizational and individual interactions. Instances are network neutrality,

network economics In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Netw ...

, and the science and management of innovations and knowledge-creation. He holds 21 patents, and, as of November 11, 2015, his publications have been cited 11,332 times. His h-index is 55.Google Scholar Record for Debasis Mitra
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Awards

* Premium award for best publication (IEEE, England, 1967) *

IEEE Fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...

(1988) * Steven O. Rice Prize Paper (1992) for his paper ''Asymptotically Optimal Design of Congestion Control for High Speed Data Networks''. * ''Bell labs fellow'' (1998) * IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award for the contributions to

echo cancellation Echo suppression and echo cancellation are methods used in telephony to improve voice quality by preventing echo from being created or removing it after it is already present. In addition to improving subjective audio quality, echo suppression ...

(1998) * Elected to the

for contributions to communications systems (2003) * ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement Award for his fundamental contributions to the modeling, analysis, and design of communication networks (2012)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitra, Debasis Queueing theorists 20th-century Indian mathematicians Scientists at Bell Labs Fellow Members of the IEEE Alumni of the University of London 1944 births Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty Scientists from Kolkata