By Jackie Nemeth Posted October 22, 2009 Atlanta
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Justin K. Romberg, an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), is one of 16 researchers from across the United States to receive a 2009 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. Dr. Romberg is the fifth faculty member from the Georgia Institute of Technology–and the second from ECE–to receive this honor.
The Packard Fellowship, which consists of an unrestricted research grant of $875,000 from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, is one of the most prestigious awards for young faculty in science and engineering. This year, 99 nominations were made by presidents of 50 invited universities, and a team of nationally recognized scientists then chose the final recipients.
"During his four years at Georgia Tech, Justin has proven himself to be an outstanding researcher and teacher," said Gary S. May, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE. "He brings great enthusiasm to all that he does and is a terrific example for our faculty and students to follow."
Romberg will use funding from the Packard Fellowship to develop theory, algorithms, and hardware for next-generation acquisition systems by exploiting underlying signal structures. He is particularly interested in linking the role that randomness plays in efficient data acquisition to its role in solving large-scale inverse problems. This work will influence the design of both the hardware and software used in next-generation acquisition systems, and has the potential to affect application areas as diverse as radar electronic intelligence, seismic imaging, acoustic source localization, and computer graphics rendering.
In addition to receiving the Packard Fellowship, Romberg was among the 100 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering named by President Barack Obama this past summer, and he also holds an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. An active participant and organizer of professional conferences and workshops, Dr. Romberg serves as associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, one of the most impactful journals in signal processing, communications, and applied mathematics. He has been a consultant to the CBS television show Numb3rs and has contributed to the Connexions Project at Rice University since 2001, where he has authored signal processing modules that have been accessed over one million times.
As a faculty member, Romberg believes that his primary role is to disseminate knowledge and finds great rewards in doing cutting-edge research and training the next generation of engineers and scientists. "I am truly honored to receive this award," he said. "I have been very fortunate in receiving tremendous mentoring and support throughout my career, first as a graduate student at Rice, then as a postdoc at Caltech, and now as a young faculty member at Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech has a strong tradition of excellence in signal processing of which I am glad to be a part."
A recipient of three electrical engineering degrees from Rice University, Romberg is the fifth Georgia Tech faculty member to earn a Packard Fellowship, joining previous awardees Ali Adibi, ECE, 2002; Dragomir Davidovic, Physics, 2000; Jessica Hodgins, Computer Science, 1994; and Mei-Yin Chou, Physics, 1990.