News & Events
The Dean Lytle Electrical Engineering
Endowed
Lecture Series
The Dean Lytle Electrical Engineering Endowed Lecture Series is the department’s premiere annual event, featuring internationally renowned researchers in the field of communications and signal processing. The Lytle Endowed Lecture Series was made possible by a fundraising campaign led by Dean Lytle’s PhD student, Dr. Louis Scharf (Class of '69). These lectures are open to the public and free of charge.
The lectures, named as they are for Professor Lytle, are in fact a tribute to him and his cohort of friends and colleagues who taught electrical engineering during his 40-year career at the UW. They inspired their students with their technical gifts and guided them with the light touch of their mentoring.
The 2012-2013 Lytle Lecture Series Presents:
Alan S. Willsky
Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Director, Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Host: EE Professor Howard Chizeck
Co-host: EE Professor
Jenq-Neng Hwang, Chair, Lytle Endowed Lectureship Committee
Learning & Inference for Graphical & Hierarchical Models:
A Personal Journey
Technical Colloquium
Tuesday, May 14th, 2013, 10:30-11:20am
Electrical Engineering Building, Room 105
Map and Directions
Building a Career on the Kindness of Others
For General Audience
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013, 3:30-4:30pm
The Paul G. Allen Center - Microsoft Atrium
Map and Directions
Biography
Alan S. Willsky is the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. Dr. Willsky was a founder, member of the Board of Directors, and Chief Scientific Consultant of Alphatech, Inc. Dr. Willsky has held visiting positions at several institutions in England and France. He has authored more than 200 journal papers and 350 conference papers, as well as two books, including the widely used undergraduate text Signals and Systems. Prof. Willsky has received numerous awards, including the 1975 American Automatic Control Council Donald P. Eckman Award, the 1980 IEEE Browder J. Thompson Memorial Award, the 2004 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award, a number of other best paper awards, and an honorary doctorate from Université de Rennes. Prof. Willsky received the 2009 Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society and in 2010 was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Prof. Willsky is the leader of MIT’s Stochastic Systems Group. His early work on methods for failure detection in dynamic systems is still widely cited and used in practice, and his more recent research on multiresolution methods for large-scale data fusion and assimilation has found application in fields including target tracking, object recognition, oil exploration, oceanographic remote sensing, and groundwater hydrology. Dr. Willsky’s present research interests are in problems involving multidimensional and multiresolution estimation and imaging, inference algorithms for graphical and relational models, statistical image and signal processing, data fusion and estimation for complex systems, image reconstruction, discovery of models for complex interacting phenomena, and computer vision.
About Dean Lytle
The lecture series honors the late Professor Dean W. Lytle who began his career as an assistant professor in 1958 at the University of Washington Department of Electrical Engineering. Professor Lytle's teaching and research was in communications, networks, probability and signal processing. He wrote two textbooks, Introduction to Random Processes, and with W.W. Harman, Electrical and Mechanical Networks. Professor Lytle’s consulting work included long-term and high-impact appointments at Boeing, Honeywell, and Bell Telephone.
Professor Dean Lytle received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1950 from the University of California, Berkeley. He received both his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1954 and 1957, respectively.
Previous Lytle Lecturers
2011-2012
Ingrid Daubechies, James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke University
Title (General Audience): Can Image Analysis Detect the Hand of the Master? Wavelets and Applications to the Analysis of Art Paintings
Title (Colloquium):Quantifying the (dis)similarity Between Surfaces
Abstract Watch the Video (general talk) Watch the Video (colloquium)
2010-2011
Thomas Kailath, Hitachi America Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Stanford
Title (General Audience): Mathematical Engineering: Origins and Impact
Title (Colloquium): From Radiative Transfer Theory to Fast Algorithms for Cell Phones
Abstract Watch the Video (colloquium)
2009-2010
Irwin Jacobs, Co-founder of Qualcomm
Title: From Cell Phones to Smart Phones to Smart Books—An Exciting Journey
2008-2009
Vince Poor, Dean of the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences at Princeton University
Title (General Audience): Anytime, Anywhere: The Wireless Revolution
Title (Colloquium): Competition and Collaboration in Wireless Networks
Abstract Watch the Video (colloquium)
Committee Members
Jenq-Neng Hwang (Committee Chair), Louis Scharf (Committee Co-Chair), Les Atlas (Committee Chair, 2007-2012), Bishnu Atal, Maryam Fazel, Jeff Bilmes, Erin Olnon
Past Members: Michael Dean Allain, Jim Ritcey
Giving to the Lytle Lecture Fund
With the generous help of many donors including the Lytle family, alumni and friends Dean Lytle’s legacy will be celebrated for generations to come. Contributions to the Lytle Fund can be made online or by mail.
Online: Indicate “Lytle” in the keyword box at: www.washington.edu/giving/make-a-gift
By Mail: Send check made to UW Foundation indicate “Lytle Lecture” in subject box and mail to: UW Foundation Gift Processing, Box 359505, Seattle WA 98195-9505
