Wu Awarded Harriett B. Rigas Award from the IEEE Education Society

Professor Min Wu, the Clark School of Engineering’s associate dean for graduate programs, is the 2019 recipient of the Harriett B. Rigas Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Education Society. This honor is awarded annually to recognize outstanding female faculty who have made significant contributions to undergraduate education and the global engineering community. Professor Wu is being recognized for excellence and outstanding leadership in signal processing, education, and mentoring.

“Dr. Wu is an outstanding female role model for her strong passion and impactful contributions in research, education, service to the engineering community, and outreach,” said Distinguished University Professor K.J. Ray Liu, who nominated Dr. Wu for this award.

Dr. Wu joined the University of Maryland faculty in 2001 and is a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, and the Institute for Systems Research, specializing in information forensics and security, multimedia signal processing, and sensing analytics. At the University of Maryland, Dr. Wu established the Media and Security Team (MAST) in 2001. She was also instrumental in establishing the “Women-in-ECE” program at UMD to help female students foster a sense of community and peer support, and served as its faculty advisor for over a decade. She provided a substantial amount of mentoring of junior colleagues, both at UMD across multiple academic departments/colleges and through IEEE technical activities. She engaged more than 30 undergraduates in research and served as thesis advisor of 20 graduate students, including a number of female and underrepresented minority students.

Dr. Wu has a strong research record and well known for her innovative and high-impact research in security, forensics, and signal processing. She has authored 185 refereed journal and conference publications, and was granted 10 U.S. patents and 5 international patents, with 16 more pending. She co-authored several papers being recognized by paper awards from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, EURASIP, and ACM, and she received multiple innovation awards.

She has been an active member of the IEEE and took on a number of leadership positions, including Vice President for Finance in the IEEE Signal Processing Society, Chair of IEEE Technical Committee on Information Forensics and Security, and Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. As Editor-in-Chief, she led this flagship publication in signal processing through a major redesign and brought a steady increase in citation impact to an all-time high. In this role, she raised the visibility on signal processing education and supported the outreach to students at various levels and professionals around the world.

Earlier, she has been honored with an IEEE Meritorious Service Award and the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer recognition. She has been named as a Fellow for outstanding technical contributions by both the IEEE and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

From UMD, Dr. Wu has been awarded a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, the George Corcoran Education Award, the Clark School E. Robert Kent Junior Faculty Teaching Award, and twice the Inventor of the Year Award. She has also been honored with a National Science Foundation Career Award and an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award on information security and protection, and was named one of 100 top young innovators in the MIT Technology Review Magazine in 2004. In August 2019, she was appointed as the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs of the Clark School of Engineering.

“I feel really honored being selected to receive this prestigious IEEE award named after Dr. Harriett Rigas - a woman pioneer in engineering and education,” said Wu. “What the award recognizes is actually a teamwork: I like to convey my deep appreciation to the many students with whom I have had the privilege to teach, mentor, or collaborate and see them grow and succeed, and to a number of caring colleagues and mentors—male and female—who have helped me in various stages of life and career!”

Published September 20, 2019