Arlington, Va. – The
Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) today announced that Sen. Tom A. Coburn,
M.D. (R-Okla.) and Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) will be recognized for their
support of technology innovation during the seventh annual Digital Patriots Dinner
on May 11.
They will join Dr.
Robert E. Kahn, chairman, CEO and president of the Corporation for National
Research Initiatives (CNRI), in receiving their awards at the Andrew W. Mellon
Auditorium in Washington.
Coburn was elected to
the U.S. Senate in 2004. He is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the Committee on
Finance. In 2006, Dr. Coburn teamed up with then-Senator Barack Obama to create
USAspending.gov, an online database of all federal spending, according to CEA.
Eshoo was first sworn in
as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993. “For nearly two
decades in Congress she has defended consumers, promoted American
competitiveness and innovation, fought for access to health care, protected the
environment and encouraged development of clean energy technology,” CEA said.
Eshoo has served on the
House Energy and Commerce Committee since 1995 and is ranking member of the
Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, which has primary jurisdiction
over the Internet and telecommunications. Eshoo also co-chairs the
Congressional Internet Caucus, the NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus and the House Medical
Technology Caucus, and serves as vice chair of the 21st Century Health Care
Caucus.
Kahn founded CNRI in
1986 as a not-for-profit organization to provide leadership and funding for
research and development for the National Information Infrastructure. In 1972,
Kahn moved to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and
subsequently became director of DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques
Office.
Kahn conceived the idea
of open-architecture networking and is a co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols,
CEA said. He also reportedly coined the term National Information Infrastructure
(NII), which later became more widely known as the Information Super Highway.
In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of
Technology to Kahn and Vinton G. Cerf for founding and developing the Internet.
They both received various other awards, including the ACM Turing Award and the
Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2005.
The Digital Patriots
Dinner will be held in conjunction with CES on the Hill, scheduled May 10 at
the Eastern Market in Washington.
