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Memorial Tributes: Volume 17 (2013)

Chapter: W. DAVID SINCOSKIE

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Suggested Citation:"W. DAVID SINCOSKIE." National Academy of Engineering. 2013. Memorial Tributes: Volume 17. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18477.
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Suggested Citation:"W. DAVID SINCOSKIE." National Academy of Engineering. 2013. Memorial Tributes: Volume 17. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18477.
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W. DAVID SINCOSKIE

1954–2010

Elected in 2000

“For contributions in packet switching for integrated networks.”

BY STEWART PERSONICK

We note with deep regret the death of our respected colleague, W. David Sincoskie, who passed away on October 20, 2010, at age 55. He was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1954, and received his bachelor’s (1975), master’s (1977), and PhD in electrical engineering (1980) from the University of Delaware.

A fellow of the International Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Dave was a pioneering contributor for more than three decades to the field of computer communications and, in particular, to the emergence of today’s ubiquitous Internet and its many applications. He was a member of the community of researchers who early on recognized that rapid advances in electronics, signal processing, and high-capacity communication systems would enable a single, integrated telecommunications network to economically provide transport of data, voice, and video information in the form of packets.

He worked for many years (1980–2008) in the telecommunications industry, at Bell Laboratories and at Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies), before transitioning to a second career as a full professor and the founding director of the Center for Information and Communications Sciences at the University of Delaware.

Suggested Citation:"W. DAVID SINCOSKIE." National Academy of Engineering. 2013. Memorial Tributes: Volume 17. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18477.
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During his career as a researcher and research manager in the telecommunications industry, Dave organized research groups and research initiatives in the then emerging areas of local area networks, packet switching, packet network architecture, Internet telephony, and packet video. His research activities and contributions also extended to packet network management, mobile and ad hoc networking, alloptical and wireless networking, and network security. He made many seminal contributions to the science and technologies of packet communications networks, including the first demonstration of a voice-over-packet telephone, the first virtual local area network (LAN), the first description of a digital video server, and the first wide area gigabit-data-rate computer network (the Aurora network). He cofounded the subfield of active networking. During the transition, circa 1995, of the US government-sponsored NSFnet (previously ARPAnet) to today’s commercial Internet protocol (IP) networks, Dave played a key role in encouraging and assisting the traditional telecommunications carriers to establish network access points (NAPs) to enable them to accept and deliver Internet traffic.

From 1996 to 2008 he was group senior vice president of Telcordia’s Networking Systems Laboratory where, among other achievements, he did much to advance Internet telephony. From 1989 to 2008, he was also an adjunct professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dave’s record of service to the US Department of Defense through the National Research Council included membership on the Board on Army Science and Technology (BAST) and committees of the Air Force Studies Board. He served on the BAST Committee on Strategies for Network Science, Technology, and Experimentation, which recommended the creation of a government-sponsored research center in network science, directly contributing to the decision to create the Army Research Laboratory Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance. He also served for many years on the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Information Sciences and Technology group and the Internet

Suggested Citation:"W. DAVID SINCOSKIE." National Academy of Engineering. 2013. Memorial Tributes: Volume 17. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18477.
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Architecture Board. In addition, as a Special (US) Government Employee since 2002, he provided technical and management advice to senior executives at the National Security Agency.

Dave received the IEEE Communication Society’s Fred W. Ellersick Prize in 2003 for his paper “Broadband Packet Switching: A Personal Perspective,” which detailed his research contributions over two decades to the development of the broadband Internet. In 2006 he was inducted into the University of Delaware’s Alumni Wall of Fame. He was a member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu.

His colleagues remember Dave as a dedicated and persistent researcher and research manager. He was also a conscientious mentor and generous research collaborator. People all over the world who are using high-performance and low-cost packet communications for business, education, entertainment, personal activities, and participation as informed citizens in democratic societies are the beneficiaries of his life and work.

Dave is survived by his wife JoAnn, who wrote that he enjoyed travelling around the world and gourmet dinners at home with her and their cats.

Dave and I enjoyed spending our 25th anniversary in Paris and Cannes, France. He and I also spent a pleasurable time in Tokyo, Japan, and for several years had fun hiking in Austria and Switzerland. We had good memories of times in Boston after Dave’s business trips to Woods Hole. His most recent hobby had been playing golf and he enjoyed it in Taiwan, Palm Springs, and at Hartefeld Country Club near his home in Delaware.

He was a wine connoisseur and his wife, a gourmet cook, added that they enjoyed dinners at home. She wrote that “Dave valued his friends and colleagues, who during nice weather would visit and dine outdoors” on their deck, but he also enjoyed an occasional pizza night with his wife and her father and aunt on their deck in Delaware.

Suggested Citation:"W. DAVID SINCOSKIE." National Academy of Engineering. 2013. Memorial Tributes: Volume 17. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18477.
×
Page 296
Suggested Citation:"W. DAVID SINCOSKIE." National Academy of Engineering. 2013. Memorial Tributes: Volume 17. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18477.
×
Page 297
Suggested Citation:"W. DAVID SINCOSKIE." National Academy of Engineering. 2013. Memorial Tributes: Volume 17. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18477.
×
Page 298
Suggested Citation:"W. DAVID SINCOSKIE." National Academy of Engineering. 2013. Memorial Tributes: Volume 17. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18477.
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This is the 17th Volume in the series Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and foreign associates. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and foreign associates, the Academy carries out the responsibilities for which it was established in 1964.

Under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering was formed as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. Members are elected on the basis of significant contributions to engineering theory and practice and to the literature of engineering or on the basis of demonstrated unusual accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology. The National Academies share a responsibility to advise the federal government on matters of science and technology. The expertise and credibility that the National Academy of Engineering brings to that task stem directly from the abilities, interests, and achievements of our members and foreign associates, our colleagues and friends, whose special gifts we remember in this book.

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