Dr. Martin Vetterli is a preeminent scholar and academic leader whose career has profoundly influenced the field of electrical engineering and signal processing. Currently serving as a professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, he previously held the distinguished position of EPFL president from 2017 to 2024, becoming the institution's fifth president. His academic foundation includes a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich in 1981, a master's from Stanford University in 1982, and a doctorate from EPFL in 1986 under the supervision of Henri J. Nussbaumer. Before returning to EPFL as a full professor in 1995, he established his scholarly reputation through faculty appointments at Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley, where he achieved full professorship at the remarkably young age of 38.
Dr. Vetterli's pioneering research in wavelet theory and signal processing algorithms has revolutionized digital media technologies, forming the mathematical foundation for ubiquitous standards including MP3 audio compression, JPEG image encoding, and WiFi communication protocols. His seminal contributions to time-frequency representations and multimedia signal processing earned him election to the United States National Academy of Engineering in 2015, recognizing work that fundamentally transformed how digital information is efficiently compressed and transmitted across global networks. His research has yielded approximately two dozen patents that enabled significant technology transfers to high-tech companies and catalyzed the creation of multiple successful startups, demonstrating exceptional translational impact. His scholarly excellence has been acknowledged through numerous prestigious honors including the Swiss National Latsis Prize in 1996 and multiple best paper awards from the IEEE Signal Processing Society spanning three decades.
Beyond his technical contributions, Dr. Vetterli has been instrumental in shaping the global research ecosystem through visionary leadership and dedicated mentorship of future engineering leaders. He has supervised over sixty doctoral students across Switzerland and the United States, maintaining active interest in their successful careers in both academic and business spheres. Throughout his distinguished administrative career at EPFL, where he served as vice president for international affairs from 2004 to 2011 and dean of the School of Computer and Communications Sciences in 2011-2012, he championed transdisciplinary research initiatives including founding the National Competence Center in Research on Mobile Information and Communication Systems. As he transitions from the EPFL presidency to renewed research focus, Dr. Vetterli continues to advance open science, computational thinking, and sustainability through his leadership of the Audiovisual Communications Laboratory and his enduring influence on the next generation of engineering innovators worldwide.
