“…outstanding theoretical contributions to the field of signal processing that have enabled significant advances in medical imaging, and excellence in teaching and mentoring the next generation of engineers and scholars who continue to advance the field of signal processing.”
Professor Adali started teaching at UMBC in 1992, the same year that she received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Shortly after joining UMBC, she began forging lasting collaborations, first locally, and then nationwide and internationally. This resulted in the steady buildup of a research program, with continuous and growing funding from major federal agencies, including the prestigious NSF CAREER grant, the U.S. Army, and industry. She took full advantage of UMBC’s advantageous position, with respect to proximity to major medical institutions. She moved her application domain to biomedical data analysis early in her career, where she helped define the field of data-driven image analysis and fusion, an area that continues to grow in importance. She is a very popular teacher and is mentor to an impressive number of Ph.D students, several of whom have assumed faculty positions at institutions such as Virginia Tech, the University of New Mexico, and Yale.
Professor Adali has been also active within her professional community, having chaired the Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP) Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and having served on a number of boards of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. She has also assisted in the organization of numerous international conferences and workshops, including the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), the IEEE International Workshop on Neural Networks for Signal Processing (NNSP), and the IEEE International Workshop on MLSP. She has been on the editorial boards of a number of transactions and journals and is currently serving on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the IEEE, among others.
In addition, Professor Adali is a Fellow of the IEEE and the AIMBE, and has received the following awards: the 2010 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, the 2013 University System of Maryland Regents’ Award for Research, and an NSF CAREER Award. She was also an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer for 2012 and 2013.