Three engineering faculty members have been selected by IEEE to receive prestigious 2008 honors: Drs. Yaakov Bar-Shalom and Bahram Javidi, both of the department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Sanguthevar Rajasekaran of the department of Computer Science & Engineering. Drs. Bar-Shalom and Javidi will receive their awards officially in fall ’08.
Dr. Yaakov Bar-Shalom, the Marianne E. Klewin Professor in Engineering and a University of Connecticut Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, was selected by IEEE’s Board of Directors to receive the 2008 IEEE Dennis J. Picard Medal for Radar Technologies and Applications. The award honors Dr. Bar-Shalom’s “contributions to techniques for radar target tracking in clutter.” A renowned international expert in estimation theory and target tracking, Dr. Bar-Shalom is credited with originating the probabilistic data association filter (PDAF) for target tracking in a low signal-to-noise ratio environment; pioneering the theoretical information limit for estimation in the presence of false measurements – and an algorithm that meets this limit; and developing the optimal track-to-track fusion (TtTF) equations for real-world asynchronous decentralized surveillance systems. These tools and tracking paradigms are used worldwide for target detection and tracking by military and national defense organizations. He has published more than 350 scholarly journal papers and conference proceedings as well as seven books. Dr. Bar-Shalom’s work has been cited over 10,000 times.
His previous honors include the IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Member Award (1987); the M. Barry Carlton Award for Best Paper in IEEE Transactions on AES (1996, 2000); the J. Mignona Data Fusion Award, presented by the Department of Defense JDL Data Fusion Group (2002); and the Distinguished Leadership and Dedicated Service Award, International Society of Information Fusion (ISIF, 2003). He has served on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society and the Board of Directors of the International Society of Information Fusion, and was President of ISIF in 2000 and 2002. He is an IEEE Fellow and a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science & Engineering.
The Dennis J. Picard Medal was established in 1999 to honor the lifetime contributions of Dennis J. Picard, who is attributed with helping Raytheon Corp. attain leadership in tactical missile systems.
Dr. Bahram Javidi, a University of Connecticut Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, was one of five collaborators selected for the 2008 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award. Dr. Javidi’s co-authors on the paper, entitled “Three-Dimensional Imaging and Processing Using Computational Holographic Imaging,” were Drs. Yann Frauel of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Thomas J. Naughton of the National University of Ireland, Osamu Matoba of Kobe University and Enrique Tajahuerce of the Universitat Jaume I, Spain. All were post-doctoral students who worked in Dr. Javidi’s laboratory at the University of Connecticut. The paper appeared in the Proceedings of IEEE (Vol. 94, number 3) in March 2006.
The award is presented for the most outstanding survey, review, or tutorial paper published among all IEEE Transactions, Journals, and Magazines, over 130 publications in the preceding year. Donald G. Fink was a distinguished editor and author who served as the first General Manager and Executive Director of the IEEE.
Dr. Javidi is a recognized expert in three-dimensional (3D) optical imaging, display, recognition and visualization whose research also encompasses secure information systems, automated visualization and recognition of biological micro/nano organisms using optical systems, biomedical image analysis, photon counting imaging, and communications systems. His research has various applications in image sensing and recognition, homeland security, medicine and military uses.
Dr. Javidi is inventor and co-inventor on 18 U.S. patents. He has authored/co-authored 8 books and 45 book chapters, more than 230 archival journal articles, and over 290 conference proceedings.
He is Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA), Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IoP), Fellow of The Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T), and Fellow of The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). His previous awards include the Dennis H. Gabor Award, presented by SPIE (2005); the Distinguished Lecturer Award, presented by the IEEE Lasers and Electro-optics Society (2004-05); two best journal paper awards presented by the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology Systems in 2003 and 2006, and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator (1990).
Dr. Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, the UTC Chair Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Director of the Booth Engineering Center for Advanced Technology, was among 295 senior IEEE members worldwide selected by the IEEE Fellow Committee for elevation to the rank of IEEE Fellow effective January 1, 2008. In announcing Dr. Rajasekaran’s selection, IEEE cited him for “contributions to sequential, parallel, and randomized algorithms and to bioinformatics.” His areas of expertise encompass applied algorithms, particularly parallel, randomized algorithms and computational geometry. His work on packet routing is considered by peers to be seminal, and his studies in integer sorting have helped pioneer new methodologies. In recent years, Dr. Rajasekaran has expanded his work into bioinformatics and computational biology.
Dr. Rajasekaran has co-authored two textbooks, Computer Algorithms/C++ (1997) and Computer Algorithms (1998), both published by W.H. Freeman Press. He has co-edited five books on algorithms and related topics. In addition he has authored 21 book chapters and more than 150 archival journal publications and conference proceedings. He has secured nine U.S. patents, alone and in collaboration with other researchers at Arcot Systems and the University of Florida.
