IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 21
BY
KATIANNE
WILLIAMS
IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/OSAMA SHUKIR MUHAMMED AMIN FRCP
BACKGROUND IMAGE FOOTAGE FIRM
Solving
Mysteries
in the
Humanities
STEM IS THE KEY FOR BARNEY
E
Electrical engineering is often viewed as a solitary endeavor with lots of equations and/or code. In reality,
it is a toolbox, and these tools can be used to advance
technology, help humanity, and solve mysteries in the
humanities. Dr. Elisa Barney, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Boise State University,
Idaho, who specializes in digital image processing and
pattern recognition, uses her toolbox to work on problems in material analysis, biomedical image processing, remote sensing, astronomical image processing,
and document analysis.
One of the most fascinating areas Barney works in
is the digital humanities, where she uses her expertise
to explore questions in fields such as English, history,
and philosophy. In 2016, she was asked to give a fourpart presentation at her church about this work in the
digital humanities. These talks were so well received by
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2019.2938937
the community that Barney applied to be a speaker at
TEDx-Boise. Once she was selected, Barney condensed
four hours of notes to fit the 18-min maximum required for TEDx. In April 2019, she presented her talk,
"How Digital Technology Helps Solve Mysteries in the
Humanities." (You can find her TED Talk by searching
"Elisa Barney" on TED.com or YouTube.com.)
In her talk, she discusses some of the unique partnerships she has formed over the years with researchers in
the humanities from around the world. For Barney, the
most exciting aspect of her job is not just developing a new
digital imaging technique but also applying it to another
discipline to meet a need or find a solution to a problem.
The projects she has worked on shed light on the ways
in which electrical engineering is a toolbox that helps
advance research in the humanities. These projects often
involve digitizing a book or piece of artwork, but what's
more important, Barney says in her talk, "is the analysis
that follows and the understanding it can enable."
Date of current version: 6 November 2019
1942-065X/19©2019IEEE
DECEMBER 2019
IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE
21
http://www.TED.com
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IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019
Contents
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - Cover1
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - Cover2
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - Contents
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 2
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 3
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 4
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 5
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IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 7
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IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 18
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 19
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 20
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 21
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 22
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 23
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IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 33
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IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - 36
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - Cover3
IEEE Women in Engineering - December 2019 - Cover4
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