Russell M. Mersereau will receive the 2017 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, which recognizes an outstanding contribution to the advancement of signal processing, other than in the areas of speech and audio processing.

A Regents’ Professor Emeritus in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Mersereau is being specifically recognized “for sustained technical contributions to multidimensional signal processing.” He will receive this award at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), scheduled for March 5-9, 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Mersereau began his career at Georgia Tech in 1975 after receiving his Ph.D. at MIT. He was among several faculty members who founded the Center for Signal and Image Processing (now known as the Center for Signal and Information Processing), considered one of the world’s most preeminent groups of digital signal processing academic and research faculty. He is a founding father of the field of multidimensional signal processing, pioneering the development of the fundamental concepts, methodologies, and tools in sampling, representing, and processing digital signals of two and higher dimensions that are used in image and video processing. His work on 2D digital filtering, hexagonal sampling, and reconstruction of multidimensional signals from their projections have impacted diverse fields ranging from crystallography, fluorescence microscopy, ultrasound and MRI imaging, cellular wireless technology, social media networks technology, and robotics.

“This is a tremendous honor for Russ both personally and professionally, and this award shows the high regard in which our digital signal processing faculty members, both past and present, are held around the world,” said Steven W. McLaughlin, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE at Georgia Tech.

Mersereau retired from ECE in 2008 after 33 years of service and held the title of Regents’ Professor for 22 years, where he was committed to excellence in research, education and professional service. He is the author of four influential textbooks and approximately 300 journal and conference papers.

During his career, Mersereau graduated over 50 Ph.D. students and numerous master’s students and taught over 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students. He is a two-time recipient of the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teacher Award, determined by a majority vote of the ECE senior class, in 1978 and 1989, and he also received Georgia Tech’s W. Roane Beard Outstanding Teacher Award in 1995. His dedication to advising graduate students was recognized with the Sigma Xi Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Advisor Award in 1995 and the Georgia Tech Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award in 2002.

A Fellow of the IEEE, Mersereau is also the recipient of the Society Award, the highest honor from the IEEE Signal Processing Society “in recognition of sustained technical contributions to and seminal writing in multidimensional digital signal processing and for active leadership in the Society.” He has served as an associate editor for several IEEE Transactions, editorial board member for the Proceedings of the IEEE, and vice president for awards and membership for the IEEE Signal Processing Society; he also helped to organize two ICASSP conferences held in Atlanta.

Among the first Georgia Tech and ECE faculty members involved in start-up company activity with the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), Mersereau co-founded Atlanta Signal Processors, Inc. (ASPI Digital) in 1981 with ECE Professor Emeritus Thomas P. Barnwell and ECE Regents’ Professor Emeritus Ronald W. Schafer. ASPI, which produced hardware and software tools for DSP algorithm development and multimedia on high-speed microprocessors, graduated from ATDC in 1990 and was acquired by Polycom, Inc. in 2001.

“I felt deeply honored and quite surprised to be nominated and to be selected for this honor,” Mersereau said. “Any accomplishments that I achieved are a tribute to the stimulating environment that I found in the School of ECE and the students and faculty that it has been able to attract over the years.”