Technology Achievement Award

SPIE Fellow Edward Delp III, the Charles William Harrison Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University (USA), is the recipient of the 2017 SPIE Technology Achievement Award.

Delp, also a professor of biomedical engineering and psychological sciences, is recognized for his pioneering work in multimedia security, including watermarking and device forensics and for his contributions to image and video compression.

Delp is considered one of the founders of the multimedia security field, in particular in the areas of watermarking, data hiding, and device forensics. His early work in image compression resulted in the development of the widely used block truncation coding (BTC) algorithm, one of three final candidates for the JPEG compression standard.

His recent work has focused on closed-form performance bounds for scalable video compression and low-complexity encoding methods.

Colleagues know Delp as a visionary research leader whose contributions to image and video technology and device forensics have had worldwide impact.

Delp has a broad view of the field that gives him an insight into the direction of the research community well in advance of the actual events, said SPIE Fellow Dan Schonfeld, codirector of the Multimedia Communications Laboratory at University of Illinois at Chicago (USA). “For example, much of his work in the area of image and video compression predates the release of the main compression standards by nearly a decade,” Schonfeld said in supporting Delp’s nomination for the award.

Delp is also being honored for his knowledge of the mathematical fundamentals of signal and multimedia processing and his energetic drive to search for new challenges in research.

Delp holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from University of Cincinnati (USA); a PhD from Purdue; and an honorary doctorate from Tampere University of Technology and has visited and lectured extensively all over the world.

His unselfish support of the global image-processing community has contributed enormously to the field, said SPIE Fellow Jaakko Astola, professor in the Department of Signal Processing at Tampere University of Technology in Finland.

“In addition to leading his active research group, he has initiated new research directions in many research groups in several countries,” Astola said. “This has often resulted in a strong boost to their research activities as well as research cooperation.”

The SPIE Technology Achievement Award, which recognizes outstanding technical accomplishment in optics, electro-optics, photonic engineering, or imaging, will be presented to Delp 30 January at the plenary session of SPIE OPTO, part of SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco, CA (USA).

The SPIE Technology Achievement Award is given annually to recognize outstanding technical accomplishment in optics, electro-optics, photonic engineering, or imaging.

Read more about SPIE Awards and Photonics West 2017 in SPIE Professional. 

• Have a question or comment about this article? Write to us at spieprofessional@spie.org.
• To receive a print copy of SPIE Professional, the SPIE member magazine, become an SPIE member.