IEEE Awards Booklet - 2019 - 13

2019 Ieee medAls

IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal
Processing Medal

IEEE Medal for Innovations
in Healthcare Technology

Sponsored by Texas Instruments, Inc.

Sponsored by the IEEE Engineering
in Medicine and Biology Society

Alan S. Willsky

Kamil Ugurbil

For contributions to stochastic modeling, multiresolution techniques, and
control-signal processing synergies

For pioneering the development and
leading the advancement of ultra-highfield MRI technology for biomedical
and brain research

Alan Willsky's ability to foresee important connections between
signal processing and disciplines such as automatic control, information theory, optimization, and statistical estimation has had a
phenomenal technical, professional, and societal impact on many
fields. His work and that of others inspired by it have demonstrated the benefits signal processing provides to applications ranging
from medical imaging to control of chemical processes and from
modeling groundwater hydrology to failure detection in avionics
systems. He provided foundational research on model-based signal processing and was one of the leaders in advancing multiresolution statistical methods, which have profoundly impacted many
fields with applications including in computer vision, biomedical
image analysis, and oceanographic remote sensing. He has made
fundamental contributions to the use of statistical methods for
the extraction of geometric structure from multidimensional data
with applications ranging from computer vision to biomedical
image analysis and has contributed strongly to graphical models and machine learning. His focus on interactions between signal processing and system theory provided the foundation for a
methodology for failure detection and identification. His contributions to the successful flight-test of a sensor failure detection
system led to his fundamental research on robust dynamic parity
checks. Failure and anomaly detection are increasingly important
due to the broad need for system monitoring in the environment
of "big data." Willsky cofounded Alphatech, Inc. where he made
important contributions to the transition of advanced statistical methods to practical systems, primarily for defense. Areas in
which Alphatech played a major role include multitarget tracking
systems using advanced radar and other sensing modalities and
automatic object recognition. Willsky has contributed more than
400 widely cited technical papers, a number of which received
some of IEEE's most prestigious awards. He is also coauthor of
the widely used text Signals and Systems.
An IEEE Life Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Willsky is the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (retired) at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Kamil Ugurbil's groundbreaking research and introduction of
innovative ultra-high-field (UHF) magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) technology have fundamentally altered the way brain research is conducted today and paved the way for new clinical
capabilities.The MRI technologies developed by Ugurbil for human studies expanded the boundaries of biomedical information
content, accuracy, and spatiotemporal resolution of imaging and
spectroscopy signals. Ugurbil founded the Center for Magnetic
Resonance Research (CMRR) at the University of Minnesota
and established it as one of the premier in vivo MR research laboratories in the world. The work that introduced functional MRI,
which measures the small local changes in deoxyhemoglobin
content that occur with brain activity, was accomplished independently and simultaneously in two laboratories, one of which
was Ugurbil's in the CMRR. Ugurbil led the development of
the first 4 Tesla (T) human scanner at a time when 1.0 and 1.5T
was the industry norm. His work on 4T MRI was instrumental
in the development of commercial 3T scanners for clinical use.
His pioneering eﬀorts in pushing human MRI technology to 7T
demonstrated the promise of UHF in providing unprecedented
improvements in contrast, sensitivity, and specificity for imaging
human brain function.The UHF technology pioneered by Ugurbil has emerged as the central tool in the U.S. National Institutes
of Health's Human Connectome Project and BRAIN Initiative,
two critically important projects in which Ugurbil has played a
leading role. Ugurbil is ushering in another new frontier in biomedical research and healthcare by introducing the first 10.5T
whole-body human scanner. Further development of UHF MRI
for improved measurements of in situ cellular chemistry as well
as anatomy and function will enable novel methods for diagnoses and evaluation of neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, cardiac
disease, and stroke.
An IEEE member and elected to both the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ugurbil holds the McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair
Professorship in Radiology, Neurosciences, and Medicine and is
director of the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research at the
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.

Scope: For outstanding achievements in signal processing.

Scope: For exceptional contributions to technologies and applications benefitting healthcare, medicine, and the health sciences.

13 | 2019 IEEE awards bookLET

IEEE Awards Booklet - 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2019