BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News Staff

Engineers signal respect for former Rice dean
C. Sidney Burrus honored for pioneering work on digital signal processing

November 19, 2008 --When folks at Rice reach for their cell phones, more than a few know whom to thank.

Groundbreaking research by C. Sidney Burrus, dean emeritus of the George R. Brown School of Engineering and the Maxfield and Oshman Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering, helped make them -- and so much more -- possible.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) knows too and will recognize Burrus' accomplishments when it awards him the 2009 Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal June 25 at its annual honors ceremony in Los Angeles.

The award, named for the Texas Instruments engineer and Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the integrated circuit, handheld calculator and thermal printer, is one of the most prestigious given by the society, which will celebrate its 125th year in 2009. At the ceremony, the IEEE will recognize exceptional contributions that have made a lasting impact on technology, society and the engineering profession.

The honor came as a surprise to Burrus. “A few days ago, I got an e-mail from the Kilby committee, and I thought, ‘Oh, they want me to write a letter of recommendation for somebody.’ Then I opened the mail, and I was shocked,” he said.

Burrus’ own work at Rice, which spans 40 years as a professor, researcher and dean, is notable not only for his scientific advances, primarily in the area of digital signal processing (DSP), but also for the kind and caring stewardship of students while he and his wife, Mary Lee, served as masters of Lovett College.

Having received his doctorate at Stanford, Burrus came to Rice in 1965. He has researched DSP for more than 30 years, specializing in the design and implementation of filters and signal-processing algorithms that have led to advances in speech recognition, sonar and radar, sensor arrays, digital audio and video, seismic data gathering, biomedical systems and many more of the digital tools and toys now taken for granted.

Burrus continues to teach one class per semester on signal processing and writes for Connexions, Rice’s open-education initiative.

Other Rice-connected recipients of the Kilby Medal, given by the IEEE since 1997, are Jim McClellan of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who earned his doctorate from Rice in 1973; Thomas Parks of Cornell, a former professor at Rice; and Hans Schuessler, professor emeritus at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and formerly a visiting professor at Rice.

“Rice has done very well in this particular award,” said Burrus, who has authored five books and more than 200 articles on DSP. “We’ve had graduates and faculty members get it a number of times, much out of proportion to the size of Rice, so I’m pleased for myself and also for the university.”