Robert Calderbank is Director of the Information Initiative at Duke University, where he is Professor of Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. Prior to joining Duke as Dean of Natural Sciences in 2010, he directed the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University. Prior to joining Princeton in 2004 he was Vice President for Research at AT&T, in charge of what may have been the first industrial research lab where the primary focus was Big Data.

Professor Calderbank is well known for contributions to voiceband modem technology, to quantum information theory, and for co-invention of space-time codes for wireless communication. His research papers have been cited more than 30,000 times and his inventions are found in billions of consumer devices. Professor Calderbank was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2005 and has received a number of awards, including the 2013 IEEE Hamming Medal for his contributions to information transmission, and the 2015 Claude E. Shannon Award.