Jacob Ziv (Tiberias, present-day Israel, 1931), winner of the first edition of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in the Information and Communication Technologies category, is author of an algorithm with the power to compress all kinds of information so it occupies less space and can be transmitted at greater speeds. This principle is what has enabled the creation of hugely popular compression standards such as mp3 (for sound), gif or png (image) or pdf (text).
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards are intended to recognize and promote research of excellence. The breadth of disciplines addressed and their monetary amount – a combined purse of 3.2 million euros spread over eight prize categories – place them among the world's foremost award schemes.
Exploring the limits
Jacob Ziv is clear about the value of basic research and enumerates the main trends he sees as likely to influence the development of future technologies.
"There is a lot of accent nowadays on technology transfer tools, to ensure scientific contributions get utilized as fast as possible", he explains. "But there are also signs that this process is being carried out at the expense of curiosity-driven research , which is the only source for future, unforeseen and sometimes unexpected contributions. In the midst of a world economic crisis, it becomes even more essential to nourish long-term research, as an investment in a better future."
Ziv's own research is basic in nature, geared to "seeking fundamental limits that are associated with the reliable transmission, storing and processing of information, and ways and means to efficiently approach these limits". Such information, he points out, may be man-made or generated by nature (physical data measured by sensors, DNA sequences, etc).
His ideas have also been instrumental in improving the capacity of hard drives and optimizing fax retransmission. Professor Ziv, moreover, has authored numerous works on Information Theory addressing aspects of "lossy" compression. These have proved a major influence in video compression as well as finding applications in DVD and high-definition television technologies.
How does he see this area developing? "By definition, it is impossible to predict unexpected, revolutionary advances," Ziv responds. But he goes on to list some unsolved problems that might hold the key to future advances; among them, a better understanding of universal data compression that allows for some distortion, or the creation of universal sorting and classification methods. "This, for example, could enable the building of useful bridges between system biology and information and communication theory".
Jacob Ziv has worked at Bell Laboratories and since 1970 has held a professorship at the Israel Institute of Technology, the Technion, in Haifa (Israel).
Award presentation ceremony
The presentation ceremony will take place on June 18 in the BBVA Foundation's Madrid headquarters under the presidency of the Minister of Science and Innovation, Cristina Garmendia, and the BBVA Foundation President, Francisco González.
The event will welcome eminent members of the international scientific community and high-level government institutions alongside personalities from the worlds of business and the arts.The Foundation is partnered in these awards by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), whose advisory input was instrumental in the appointment of the prize juries.
The jury in the Information and Communication Technologies category was formed by Andrea Goldsmith, Ronald Ho and Oussama Khatib, of Stanford University; Ramón López de Mántaras, from the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the CSIC; Nico de Rooij, of the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland); and Sergio Verdú from Princeton University.The BBVA Foundation supports knowledge generation, scientific research and the promotion of culture, relaying the results of its work to society at large.
This effort materializes in research projects, human capital investment, specialization courses, grants and awards. Basic sciences figure among the Foundation's preferred areas of activity.