The winners of the 2024 Awards have been announced! Please see here for more details.
Click here for the full list of all prior NAB Engineering Achievement Award Honorees going back to 1959.
2024 Engineering Achievement Award for Radio: David Kolesar
David Kolesar has worked in the broadcast engineering field for over 30 years, and currently serves as a senior broadcast engineer for Hubbard Radio, where he has worked since 2006. Kolesar previously was an Electronics Engineer in the Information Technology Division of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
Kolesar is a broadcast engineering pioneer, having commissioned the first full-time all-digital AM radio station in the U.S. by converting, adapting, and rehabilitating Hubbard station WWFD in Frederick, Md., serving as the chief engineer as well as the program director.
In addition to his efforts to make all-digital AM radio a reality, Kolesar has been an advocate for all-digital AM within the industry, sharing and documenting his work in numerous technical papers and at conferences, and continuing research on ways to improve all-digital AM performance.
Kolesar has been recognized by other industry organizations for his contributions including receiving the Radio World Excellence in Engineering award in 2019 and the Society of Broadcast Engineers Chapter 37 Engineer of the Year award in 2020.
2024 Engineering Achievement Award for Television: M. Winston Caldwell
Winston Caldwell has over 25 years of electrical engineering experience, specializing in network communications, security, spectrum management, and standards development. He began his career at Fox Corporation in 2000, spending 23 years there in various engineering roles, including vice president of spectrum engineering. He then became an independent consultant in 2023 with Pearl TV, the ATSC 3.0 Security Authority (A3SA) and NAB among his clients.
Caldwell led the development and deployment of the A3SA security system, which protects Next Gen TV services and broadcast content. He also managed engineering efforts for transitioning Fox stations to the ATSC 3.0 system and served as chairman of the NAB Next Generation Broadcast Platform Task Force.
Caldwell’s technical analysis in contributions to development of spectrum policy have been utilized in regulatory matters, domestically at the FCC and internationally at the International Telecommunication Union.
Caldwell is a frequent presenter and panelist at technical conferences and actively participates in several ATSC 3.0 specialist groups. In addition, he is a longstanding member of the NAB Television Technology Committee.
