Honour for Signal Processing Professor
Jonathon Chambers, Professor of Communications and Signal Processing in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering has been given the honour of being named an IEEE Fellow in the Institute's 2011 Honours List.
He has been recognised for contributions to adaptive signal processing and its applications. An IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognised by the technical community as a prestigious honour and an important career achievement.
Professor Chambers, who is an expert in adaptive and blind signal processing and their applications in biomedicine and communications, said: “It really is a great honour to be become an IEEE Fellow as the association is the world’s leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity.
“Out of 385,000 members, just 321 individuals have been awarded the IEEE Fellow so I am delighted to have been recognised for my work.”
Why was Professor Chambers honoured? Read on.
Jonathon Chambers’ research career over the last twenty years has been focused upon adaptive signal processing and its applications; and he has contributed to academic and industrial research, research student mentoring and as an ambassador for the IEEE in the UK.
Academic research: His most distinctive contribution has been his seminal research monograph in non linear adaptive filtering written with one of his former PhD researchers and published by Wiley in 2001, as a volume in the invitation only series on adaptive and learning systems for signal processing, communications, and control. His individual research has contributed fundamentally to the advancement of the analysis of on-line learning algorithms for adaptive filters and has had major impact. Such algorithms have wide application in the field of communications, for example in eliminating acoustic echoes which are perceived when using a hands-free mobile phone.
Industrial research: Together with advancing the theoretical aspects of adaptive signal processing, he is extremely highly regarded for his contributions to industry. In his early career he successfully applied adaptive signal processing to the interpretation of multiple sensor measurements in the context of volumetric analysis of multiphase flow. This experience provided the foundation for his more recent work in processing multisensorelectroencephalogram (EEG) measurements to aid brain analysis. As a result of this work he has also co-authored a unique research monograph in EEG signal processing again with Wiley, providing technical leadership in the signal processing aspects. His unique industrial contributions have also been recognized by the internationally renowned defense systems company QinetiQ with the award, in 2007, of the first Visiting Fellowship for outstanding contributions to adaptive signal processing.
Research student mentoring: He is also a singularly outstanding research mentor; he has steered many researchers to PhD graduation, many of whom now hold academic and industrial positions across the globe. He possesses extraordinary skills in guiding fledgling researchers from a position as a novice researcher to a point where they are delivering at the highest international level. His graduates have worked with some of the foremost research groups in the USA and Europe.
IEEE service in the UK: He was also voted onto the IEEE Technical Committee on Signal Processing Theory and Methods by his peers and has served this committee tirelessly over the last five years, due to his personal efforts, the IEEE Workshop in Statistical Signal Processing was held for the first time in the UK in 2009, and it was a great success.