WASHINGTON—At its annual NextGen Broadcast Conference this week, ATSC honored Julia Kenyon of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) with the 2026 Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award.

“Julia is an excellent consensus builder and techno-diplomat who is a graceful and very competent leader,” ATSC President Madeleine Noland said. “She knows how to help groups get things done efficiently and collegially, which is a real art. Not only has she led multiple ATSC committees, but Julia also has a terrific sense of humor and is able to blend levity with the serious nature of standards work. She is always curious, and most recently has been helping ATSC participants really lean into the benefits of developing artificial intelligence tools.”

Kenyon has served as Vice Chair of ATSC Specialist Group on Interactive Environment (TG3/S38), Vice Chair of ATSC Implementation on Conformance (IT-3), and Chair of ATSC Specialist Group on Management and Protocols (TG3/S33). Additionally, for more than three years, she has served as CTA’s lead technical representative for the NextGen TV Test Suite development, working not only with ATSC but as chair of CTA’s own groups that work with the test suite.

Kenyon also guided ATSC in the development of A/381, the recommended practice for use of the broadcaster application for NextGen TV.

“Julia Kenyon brings unique skills to the challenge of ensuring NextGen TVs work properly with the advanced services ATSC 3.0 broadcasts provide,” said Brian Markwalter, vice chair of the ATSC board of directors and senior vice president of research and standards for the CTA. “Besides her visible leadership in ATSC and CTA standards groups, Julia directs the TV testing program that backs the NextGen TV logo. CTA commends Julia on this recognition of all she has done for ATSC and the industry.”

“Julia is an exceptional contributor to ATSC 3.0,” added Dr. Paul Hearty of Technology Advisors, an ATSC board member and ATSC Technical Group 3 (TG3) chair. “She leads and contributes to standards and compliance development both in ATSC and in CTA, covering the spectrum from origination of services at broadcast to consumption at consumer devices. She maintains balance, fairness, and technical rigor—as well as humor—throughout.”

The Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award is given each year to an ATSC member whose technical and leadership contributions have been exemplary. It is named for its first recipient, the late Bernard Lechter, retired staff vice president, Advanced Video Systems at RCA Laboratories, whose 30-year career covered all aspects of television and display research.

Lechner Award recipients:

• 2000 – Bernard Lechner, Consultant
• 2001 – Rich Chernock, Triveni Digital
• 2002 – Regis Crinon, Microsoft
• 2003 – Glenn Adams, Extensible Formatting Systems
• 2004 – Graham Jones, National Association of Broadcasters
• 2005 – John Henderson, Hitachi
• 2006 – Art Allison, NAB
• 2007 – Mark Eyer, Sony Electronics
• 2008 – Michael Dolan, TBT
• 2009 – Wayne Bretl, Zenith/LG Electronics
• 2010 – Pat Waddell, Harmonic
• 2011 – Jim Starzynski, NBC Universal
• 2012 – S. Merrill Weiss, Merrill Weiss Group
• 2013 – Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group
• 2014 – James Kutzner, PBS
• 2015 – Luke Fay, Sony
• 2016 – Madeleine Noland, Zenith/LG Electronics
• 2017 – Skip Pizzi, NAB
• 2018 – Mark Corl, Triveni Digital
• 2019 – Adam Goldberg, AGP/Sony
• 2020 – Jae-Young Lee, ETRI
• 2021 – Alan Stein, InterDigital
• 2022 – Youngkwon Lim, Samsung Electronics
• 2023 – Glenn Reitmeier, NBC Universal/Sarnoff Labs
• 2024 – Ali Dernaika, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• 2025 – Aldo Cugnini, AGC Systems
• 2026 – Julia Kenyon, Consumer Technology Association

WASHINGTON D.C.—During the annual NextGen Broadcast Conference this week, the ATSC honored Dr. Sung-Ik Park of Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) with the organization’s Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal and presented Ali Dernaika of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) with the Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award.

Named for the legendary former ATSC president who led the organization for two decades spanning both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0, the Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal recognizes an individual or team that demonstrates exemplary leadership in advancing the mission of ATSC and epitomizes the vision, tenacity, and leadership qualities that were the hallmark of his leadership.

“Sung-Ik Park has the vision to understand how to move technology forward,” said ATSC President Madeleine Noland. “He has the tenacity to overcome obstacles in his path. And he has the leadership to build great teams to successfully execute on his plans, furthering the broadcasting ecosystem, and ATSC 3.0 in particular. You may think of Dr. Park as a person tirelessly supporting the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer proposal in Brazil. Together with his colleagues at ETRI and CleverLogic, this is a major ongoing effort.  But it’s important to understand that his contributions to ATSC span many years and many projects. In addition to the Brazil project, Sung-Ik has been very influential for ATSC’s efforts in the International Telecommunications Union.” 

As a leader within ETRI, Dr. Park and his team have been continually developing ATSC prototypes, running field experiments, organizing exhibits at the NAB Show and other venues. “In fact, he is just back from Delhi where he demonstrated the efficiency of ATSC 3.0 as a mobile service choice,” Noland added that “he has made multiple trips to Brazil, sent countless correspondences to the labs in Brazil, stayed up many late nights with his team to support the equipment – all to ensure ATSC 3.0 performs to its fullest potential.  ATSC is grateful and it is our pleasure to recognize Sung-Ik with the 2024 ATSC Richer Leadership Medal.”

The Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award is bestowed once a year to an individual representative of the ATSC membership whose technical and leadership contributions to ATSC have been invaluable and exemplary.  The Lechner Award recognizes the first recipient, the late Bernard Lechner, for his outstanding service to the ATSC. Lechner was the retired Staff Vice President, Advanced Video Systems of RCA Laboratories. His 30-year career at RCA covered all aspects of television and display research.

2024 Lechner Award honoree Ali Dernaika serves as Co-Chair of ATSC Specialist Group S43, with his work revolving around broadcast core technologies and the formulation of Broadcast Core Network standard.

“Broadcast Core Network is a central technology for developing datacasting businesses,” said Noland. “You can think of it like the ‘AirBnB’ of renting spectrum capacity. Broadcasters may have some available bandwidth some of the time – like a room in a house that’s not always in use. And enterprise customers may wish to temporarily use this capacity for sending files, media or other data – like booking a room. Broadcast Core Network is the platform that connects broadcasters who have available spectrum with enterprise customers seeking a cost-effective way to distribute data.  But that description is just the tip of the iceberg. With Broadcast Core Network, the world of broadcast collided with the networking world.”

“Working on this new concept, Ali took on the role of educator, patiently helping ATSC members understand not just the big picture, but also the details of how core networks function, what they do, and how a successful platform could be designed – not to mention greatly expanding everyone’s acronym vocabulary!” Noland continued. “Before his work, Broadcast Core Network was a foreign concept, and now it's becoming part of the vernacular among our membership and beyond.”

Dernaika is a senior solution architect, specializing in digital video services within HPE’s Communications Technology Group.  His expertise has been instrumental in shaping TV service architectures and deployments, encompassing the entire spectrum from linear TV to interactive services across multiple systems. Presently, his focus centers on driving digital transformation through the adoption of cutting-edge IT and virtualization technologies, harnessing the power of IT cloud solutions.  Ali is currently based out of Dubai, UAE where he lives with his wife and 2 children.

Dr. Park and Dernaika join a distinguished cadre of industry luminaries honored by ATSC over the years. 

Lechner Award recipients include:

• 2000 – Bernard Lechner, Consultant
• 2001 – Rich Chernock, Triveni Digital
• 2002 – Regis Crinon, Microsoft
• 2003 – Glenn Adams, Extensible Formatting Systems, Inc
• 2004 – Graham Jones, National Association of Broadcasters
• 2005 – John Henderson, Hitachi
• 2006 – Art Allison, NAB
• 2007 – Mark Eyer, Sony Electronics
• 2008 – Michael Dolan, TBT
• 2009 – Wayne Bretl, Zenith/LG Electronics
• 2010 – Pat Waddell, Harmonic
• 2011 – Jim Starzynski, NBC Universal
• 2012 – S. Merrill Weiss, MWG Group
• 2013 – Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group
• 2014 – James Kutzner, PBS
• 2015 – Luke Fay, Sony
• 2016 – Madeleine Noland, LG Electronics
• 2017 – Skip Pizzi, NAB
• 2018 – Mark Corl, Triveni Digital
• 2019 – Adam Goldberg, AGP/Sony
• 2020 – Jae-Young Lee, ETRI
• 2021 – Alan Stein, InterDigital
• 2022 – Youngkwon Lim, Samsung Electronics
• 2023 – Glenn Reitmeier, NBC Universal/Sarnoff Labs
• 2024 – Ali Dernaika, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• Richer Medal recipients:
• 2019 – Mark Richer
• 2020 – The Phoenix Model Market
• 2021 – Sen. Gordon Smith, NAB
• 2022 – Sony Electronics
• 2023 – Saankhya Labs
• 2024 – Dr. Sung-Ik Park, ETRI

 Richer Medal recipients: 

• 2019 – Mark Richer
• 2020 – The Phoenix Model Market
• 2021 – Sen. Gordon Smith, NAB
• 2022 – Sony Electronics
• 2023 – Saankhya Labs
• 2024 – Dr. Sung-Ik Park, ETRI

WASHINGTON – The Advanced Television Systems Committee has announced that Mark Corl of Triveni Digital is the 2018 recipient of the organization’s highest technical honor, the Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award. The presentation this week capped the two-day ATSC NextGen TV Conference at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center.

Corl serves as Chairman of the ATSC's Technology Group 3 Specialist Group 34-4, an ad-hoc group working on the Runtime Environment for ATSC 3.0 applications. He led the development of A/344, the Interactive Content Standard.

"Mark Corl's leadership helped to form the Interactive Content Standard, and he was a key technical contributor and facilitated group consensus to complete this important element of ATSC 3.0,” said ATSC President Mark Richer. “Mark also serves as Vice Chair of the Personalization and Interactivity Implement Team, where he has coupled his detailed knowledge with practical understanding to develop real-world applications and services. In addition to those things, Mark also chairs an ad-hoc group working on ATSC 3.0 Transition Documents for broadcasters."

As Triveni Digital’s Senior Vice President of Emergent Technology Development, Mark works on new technologies that impact digital TV distribution, with a special focus on IP-delivered content. During his 20-year tenure at Triveni Digital, Corl has led the metadata generation systems development and continues to lead the test and measurement monitoring systems development effort.

Prior to Triveni Digital, Corl had 15 years of software engineering experience at leading companies including Texas Instruments and Xerox Corporation. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and computer science from Bucknell University.

The Lechner Award is bestowed annually to an individual representative of the ATSC’s membership whose technical and leadership contributions to the ATSC have been invaluable and exemplary. The title of the award recognizes the first recipient in 2000, Bernard Lechner, for his outstanding services to the ATSC. The honoree is selected by the ATSC Board of Directors and presented at the ATSC’s spring meeting. Lechner passed away in 2014 after a long career in TV technology

Read about the man behind the award.

Previous recipients of the award:

2000 – Bernard Lechner, Consultant

2001 – Rich Chernock, Triveni Digital

2002 – Regis Crinon, Microsoft

2003 – Glenn Adams, Extensible Formatting Systems, Inc 

2004 – Graham Jones, National Association of Broadcasters

2005 – John Henderson, Hitachi

2006 – Art Allison, National Association of Broadcasters

2007 – Mark Eyer, Sony Electronics 

2008 – Michael Dolan, TBT

2009 – Wayne Bretl, LG Electronics/Zenith

2010 – Pat Waddell, Harmonic

2011 – Jim Starzynski, NBC Universal

2012 – S. Merrill Weiss, MWG Group

2013 – Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group

2014 – James Kutzner, PBS

2015 – Luke Fay, Sony

2016 – Madeleine Noland, Consultant to LG Electronics

2017 – Skip Pizzi, NAB