WASHINGTON--Commerce Secretary William M. Daley has awarded two engineers at the Commerce Department's Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) at Boulder, Colo., the Silver Medal, the Department's second highest honorary award, for meritorious contributions of unusual value to the Department and the Nation.

Christopher Holloway was recognized for his work in advancing knowledge of electromagnetic theory and its application to commercial electronic systems. He developed a model that predicts the level of radio frequency emissions from printed circuit boards (used in computers and other electronic products). These emissions can cause interference with other electronic equipment. Holloway's model allows a designer to predict the level of RF emissions of a printed circuit board during the design phase, in order to achieve compliance with FCC regulations.

Stephen Voran received his award for developing an objective speech quality measurement methodology that advances the state of the art in voice quality assessment. Voran developed a set of measuring normalizing block (MNB) algorithms based on a simple model of human auditory perception. The MNB algorithms provide a cost-effective method for estimating perceived speech quality in applications such as digital cellular, PCS, digital land-mobile radio, voice-over-Internet, and digital speech for multimedia communications.

ITS is the research arm of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), U.S. Department of Commerce. ITS performs state-of-the-art telecommunications research to support NTIA and Commerce Department goals, and conducts specific research under reimbursable agreements with other Federal agencies and under cooperative research agreements with private sector partners.

NTIA serves as the principal adviser to the Executive Branch on domestic and international telecommunications and information policy issues.