The IEEE has named the recipients of its 2027 Technical Field Awards, a slate of 31 honors covering disciplines from therapeutic ultrasound and surgical robotics to power electronics, video coding and data-center networking. The IEEE Awards Board selected the honorees on the basis of technical achievement, societal impact and discipline-specific leadership, and the IEEE Board of Directors approved the list.

"The 2027 IEEE Technical Field Award recipients embody the relentless spirit of innovation and ingenuity that defines our global community," said Mary Ellen Randall, 2026 IEEE president and CEO, in a news release. "Across microelectronics, artificial intelligence, medical robotics, wireless networks, energy conversion, and technical education, their groundbreaking accomplishments continue to push the boundaries of science and solve critical challenges for the benefit of humanity."

For R&D managers, the list doubles as a map of where the engineering community places its markers on translational work — several awards cite not papers but shipped products, deployed standards and clinical systems.

Storage, semiconductors and packaging. Three Seagate Technology engineers in Cupertino, Calif. — IEEE Member Edward Charles Gage and IEEE Fellows Ganping Ju and Jan-Ulrich Thiele — take the Cledo Brunetti Award for heat-assisted magnetic recording technology behind ultra-high-capacity hard disk drives. Intel's Ann B. Kelleher, retired, receives the Frederik Philips Award for leading CMOS process development that culminated in the first node with backside power delivery — the award citation refers to a shipped manufacturing milestone, not a lab demonstration. Fellow Intel engineer Ravi Mahajan in Chandler, Ariz., earns the Rao R. Tummala Electronics Packaging Award for technology connecting multiple chips within advanced packages. On the fundamentals side, John Robert Brews, retired from the University of Arizona, receives the Andrew S. Grove Award for foundational contributions to the physics and technology of MOS devices and circuits.

Medical and biological engineering. IEEE Life Fellow Kullervo Hynynen of Sunnybrook Research Institute and the University of Toronto wins the Biomedical Engineering Award for pioneering work on development, advancement and clinical translation of therapeutic ultrasound. Russell H. Taylor, Life Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, takes the Robotics and Automation Award for contributions to and clinical translation of surgical and medical robotics. A three-person team — Jaideep Vaidya (Rutgers), Lucila Ohno-Machado (Yale School of Medicine) and Xiaoqian Jiang (UTHealth Houston) — shares the Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award for privacy-preserving distributed clinical research infrastructures enabling secure, large-scale collaboration on health data.

AI, signal processing and networking. Shun-ichi Amari of Teikyo University in Tokyo receives the Frank Rosenblatt Award for foundational contributions to neural network theory and information geometry — work that predates and underpins the current machine learning boom. Chin-Hui Lee of Georgia Tech wins the James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award, sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, for automatic speech and speaker recognition technologies including adaptive learning and discriminative training. Nicholas Sidiropoulos of the University of Virginia takes the Fourier Award for signal processing methods that identify patterns in multidimensional data. Google's Amin Vahdat receives the Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award for network systems that scale data centers for cloud computing and machine learning, while Matthew Roughan of Adelaide University earns the Internet Award, sponsored by Google, for foundational analysis of Internet traffic and network structures.

Video standards. Jens-Rainer Ohm (RWTH Aachen, professor emeritus), Gary J. Sullivan (Dolby Laboratories) and Benjamin Bross (Fraunhofer HHI, Berlin) share the Arun N. Netravali Video Analytics, Technology, and Systems Award, sponsored by Nokia Bell Labs, for leadership in developing the HEVC international standard that improved digital video compression efficiency.

Power, energy and transportation. Pragasen Pillay of Concordia University receives the Nikola Tesla Award for electric machine modeling, design and application in industrial, transportation and renewable energy settings. Paolo Mattavelli of the University of Padova takes the William E. Newell Power Electronics Award for advanced modeling and control of power converters, and Akshay Kumar Rathore of the National University of Singapore earns the Kaufmann Award for current-fed and multilevel converter topologies. Chunting Chris Mi of San Diego State University wins the Transportation Technologies Award for electric and hybrid electric vehicle technologies.

Other honors. Victor Malka of the Weizmann Institute of Science receives the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award for laser-driven particle sources advancing toward practical applications. Mike Lazaridis of Quantum Valley Investments in Waterloo takes the Masaru Ibuka Consumer Technology Award for reshaping global consumer technology through mobile communication. Gerhard Fettweis of TU Dresden's Barkhausen Institut earns the Eric E. Sumner Award for physical-layer communication technology with global wireless industry impact. Rama Chellappa of Johns Hopkins receives the Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, and Rhonda Franklin of the University of Minnesota the Undergraduate Teaching Award.

The IEEE is already accepting nominations for the 2028 Technical Field Awards, with a submission deadline of 15 January.