Jeffrey A. Fessler named Interim Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jeff Fessler, William L. Root Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been named Interim Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, effective July 1, 2024. He succeeds Dennis Sylvester, who previously served in this role and will be on sabbatical for the coming academic year.
Fessler is a world leader in medical image reconstruction. His research has focused on X-ray CT, MRI, PET, SPECT, and other inverse problems for both medical and non-medical applications. By devising methods to speed up the time it takes to produce images of the body, his team has made medical imaging more cost effective and, most importantly, safer for patients. Six of Fessler’s 13 patents have been licensed to medical scanner companies. His contributions have been recognized with the Edward J. Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Technical Achievement Award.
He is a devoted educator, earning the coveted recognition of being selected as HKN Professor of the Year three different times. Throughout his career, he has taught 11 different courses, from the freshman level Music Signal Processing to the highly-advanced graduate level course, Advanced Topics in Signal Processing: Image Reconstruction. His teaching awards include the U-M Henry Russel Award, the CoE Education Excellence Award, the Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award, and the Teaching Excellence Award from the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
He has shared his research with the world not only through his 500+ publications, but as an early proponent of the reproducible research movement, making his data and code available to the world on his own website. His book, Linear algebra for data science, machine learning, and signal processing, co-authored with Prof. Raj Rao Nadakuditi, will be available in July 2024.
Fessler holds joint appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology, the Applied Physics program, and is a member of several institution-wide centers and institutes. He has previously served as Associate Chair for the department.
“I have been very fortunate to work with terrific colleagues, students, collaborators and staff in my 33+ years at UM,” said Fessler. “I look forward to paying forward by serving ECE in this interim role.”
In addition to the research and teaching awards named above, Fessler has received the U-M Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award and the Steven Attwood Award, which is the College of Engineering’s highest faculty honor. He is a Fellow of IEEE.