ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University engineering graduate Irwin Jacobs '54, founder and chief executive of telecommunications giant Qualcomm, will deliver the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Distinguished Lecture Thursday, Oct. 10. The lecture is the first in a series to commemorate the centennial of the establishment of the local chapter of IEEE. His talk will focus on "The Third Generation of Wireless Communications."

The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be at 5 p.m. in 101 Phillips Hall on the Cornell campus.

Jacobs helped found Qualcomm in 1985, and under his leadership the concern has become a Fortune 500 company, listed in the Standard & Poors 500 Index and traded on the Nasdaq. Previously Jacobs had founded Linkabit, which merged with M/A-Com in 1980.

From 1959 to 1966, Jacobs was an assistant then associate professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1966 to 1972, he was professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California-San Diego.

Jacobs received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1956 from Cornell and a master's and doctoral degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1957 and 1959, respectively.

Recently he was awarded the Ernst & Young Information Technology Award for Global Integration by the Computerworld Smithsonian Award Program for outstanding contributions to global integration through the use of information technology. In 1994 Jacobs received the National Medal of Technology Award, given by the White House for extraordinary achievements in the commercialization of technology or the development of human resources that foster technology commercialization.