IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q1 2022 - 8

the students had to answer questions at the end of each
part explaining the results that they had obtained before
going to the next project. Each report was graded
by the teaching assistant and at the end of the term, the
student kept the set of all reports. From my brief experience
at Bell Laboratories, I found out that writing a good
report after completing a project was very important for
the staff. As there were not many graduate level courses,
I developed and taught graduate level courses on nonlinear
circuits and computer aided design of circuits,
and later developed an upper division course on digital
signal processing that I co-taught with another faculty
member. I would encourage today's early career faculty
to seek out industry partners to help shape the curriculum
as well as to help the early career researcher to understand
what the important questions are that industry
faces. Most of our students will end up in industry,
this is a partnership that we should foster.
Question 2: You have received many education awards
such as the Education Award of the IEEE Circuits & Systems
Society and the Signal Processing Society and the
IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal. You have
also cultivated many prominent researchers all over
the world. Throughout your career, how do you balance
between conducting research and educating? Can you
share your approaches to advising students?
Prof. Mitra: I always felt as a faculty member, both
research and teaching are equally important. As part of
my teaching activities, I believed that it is important to
develop new courses for the emerging areas and write
textbooks so that future generation of students are
able to learn about these areas. I was also very lucky to
have excellent doctoral students and I learnt a lot from
my interactions with them. In addition, I always had a
large number of students and visiting researchers from
abroad while being supported by agencies in their countries
who basically carried out their Master's thesis and
post-doctoral research under my supervision. Having
these international researchers in my group also served
to teach me about what were the important problems in
different countries.
During my post-graduate studies at UC Berkeley, several
professors used to give me manuscripts submitted
for possible publication and asked me to review them
and prepare my comments about them. Many times, the
topics were not in my areas of expertise and I went to
the libraries to read the papers cited in the references
which forced me to learn new topics. Moreover, the professors
told me to sign my comments and send them to
the editor directly. Afterwards the editor started sending
manuscripts directly to me. In addition, I used to
read one new paper every day which sometimes trig8
IEEE
CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
gered new research topics for me to investigate. I always
had very few PhD students in my research group which
allowed me to work closely with each student.
Question 3: You have achieved numerous successes
throughout your career, which were deservedly recognized
by your peers through awards, honorary doctoral
degrees, honorary professorships, etc. What is the
achievement that you are most proud of and why?
Prof. Mitra: I have been very fortunate to have been
recognized for my professional contributions to teaching
and research by my peers. The first recognition
was the receipt of the F.E. Terman Award of ASEE for
authoring a text book before I was 40 years old and recognized
as an outstanding young engineering educator.
The other major awards of which I have very proud of
are the Mac Van Valkenburg Society Award of the IEEE
Circuits & Systems Society in 1979 for " fundamental
contributions to the theory and teaching of active and
digital filter theory, and dedicated and creative service
to the IEEE Circuits & Systems Society " , Society Award
of the IEEE Signal Processing Society in 2011 " for important
and significant contributions to analog and digital
signal processing and image processing " , being the first
recipient of the Technical Achievement Award of the
European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP),
Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in
2003 " for contributions to signal and image processing,
for research supervision, and for writing pioneering
textbooks " , IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal
in 2006 " for outstanding contribution to electrical engineering
education through pioneering textbooks, innovative
laboratory development and curriculum reform " ,
Athanasios Papoulis Award of EURASIP " for contributions
to research and education in signal processing " ,
and the IEEE Gustav Roberts Kirchhoff Award in 2013
" for fundamental contributions to filter design and signal
processing " .
Question 4: You had several leading positions in the CAS
community, such as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE CAS Magazine
and the president of the IEEE CAS Society. How
did you experience the transition from being involved
mostly in research at the beginning of your career to
taking on management roles as your career evolved?
Prof. Mitra: Throughout my professional career, I
always have been quite involved with the activities of
IEEE, IEEE Circuits & Systems Society, and IEEE Signal
Processing Society in various capacities as I believed
IEEE being a voluntary organization, it is important of
a member to serve the society. Throughout my professional
career, I was involved with the activities of IEEE
while at the same time continuing my research and
FIRST QUARTER 2022
IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q1 2022

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