Christopher Cavoli ’87 and Robert Kahn *64 to Receive Top Alumni Awards

The University’s highest alumni awards will be presented to Gen. Christopher Cavoli ’87 and Robert Kahn *64 on Alumni Day, Feb. 25, 2023. 

Cavoli, an Army officer with more than three decades of experience, will receive the Woodrow Wilson Award, presented annually to an undergraduate alum whose career embodies Wilson’s words, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.” In July, Cavoli assumed duties as commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe. 

He has held various leadership roles throughout his career, in combat and peacekeeping missions, and has worked with the intelligence and policy communities. “His dedication to defending democracy around the world exemplifies alumni service to the nation and to humanity,” President Eisgruber ’83 said in the University’s press release. 

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Robert Kahn *64, photographed in San Francisco in 2005 when he won the Toring Prize, sometimes called the Nobel of the computing world.

Liz Hafalia/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

Kahn, known as one of the “fathers of the internet,” along with Vinton Cerf created the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), key components of the internet. He will receive the James Madison Medal, which is awarded each year to a graduate alum who has had a distinguished career, advanced the cause of graduate education, or achieved an outstanding record of public service. Kahn and Cerf “laid the groundwork for a revolutionary leap in how society thinks, works, and communicates,” Eisgruber said in the release. 

Kahn has served as adviser to Princeton’s Department of Computer Science and a speaker on various Reunions panels. He established the Robert E. Kahn *64 Professorship at the University in 2007 to support the teaching and research of a tenured faculty member in computer science or electrical engineering.