Media Contact: 
Will Wiquist
will.wiquist@fcc.gov

For Immediate Release

FCC ANNOUNCES EXCELLENCE IN ECONOMICS,
ENGINEERING AWARD WINNERS
  -- 
WASHINGTON, October 1, 2021— The Federal Communications Commission announced the winners of the agency’s Excellence in Economic Analysis and Excellence in Engineering Awards.  The Excellence in Economic Analysis Award recognizes Commission staff for outstanding economic analysis conducted in the course of their work at the FCC, while the Excellence in Engineering Award recognizes Commission staff who have made outstanding engineering, scientific or technical contributions.

Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel made the announcement at yesterday’s Open Commission Meeting, commending the winners: “Every day, the FCC benefits from the immense source of talent working within the agency.  I’m proud to recognize Martha, Julia and Ryan for their commitment to using their creativity and ingenuity in service of the public.”

Excellence in Economic Analysis Award – Martha Stancill of the Office of Economics and Analytics has won the 2021 Excellence in Economic Analysis award for her outstanding work on designing, as well as conducting, monitoring, and reviewing the bidding in, several auctions of mid-band spectrum licenses suitable for 5G technologies deployment, and an auction to award universal service support for fixed broadband services in unserved areas.  Her invaluable contributions to these auctions helped further the public policy objective of expanding broadband access to all Americans, both by making more mid-band spectrum available, and by using competitive bidding to award universal service support.

Excellence in Engineering Analysis Awards – Julia Tu and Ryan Hedgpeth from the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau share the 2021 Excellence in Engineering award for their outstanding work on the Commission’s technical investigation into the nationwide outage of a major wireless network.  Their efforts will help ensure that rapid, efficient, nation-wide radio communications service is available to all the people of the United States.  Their work on this project will help to avoid similar outages in the future, including through recommendations to service providers regarding periodic improvements to network diversity, validation of software upgrades in a lab environment, and active monitoring of 911 network components.

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This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action.  Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action.  See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).