Dr. Richard Baraniuk is a distinguished leader in electrical engineering and computational signal processing, holding the prestigious C. Sidney Burrus Professorship at Rice University where he has established himself as a pioneering researcher and innovator. He earned his B.Sc. from the University of Manitoba in 1987, followed by an M.Sc. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988, and completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992 under the supervision of Douglas L. Jones. After conducting foundational research at École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France from 1992-1993, he joined Rice University where he established the Digital Signal Processing research group and developed a reputation for bridging theoretical advances with practical applications across multiple engineering domains. His career trajectory has been marked by visionary leadership, including founding and directing major initiatives that have transformed both engineering research and educational accessibility.
Dr. Baraniuk has made seminal contributions to digital signal processing, image processing, and machine learning systems, with groundbreaking work in wavelets, compressive sensing, and deep learning that has reshaped these fields. His development of the Rice single-pixel camera represented the first compressive imaging device and was recognized by MIT Technology Review as a TR10 Top 10 Emerging Technology in 2007, demonstrating his ability to translate theoretical concepts into practical innovations that challenge conventional approaches to data acquisition. He has secured over 35 patents, with six licensed by Siemens for applications in magnetic resonance imaging, and has led major research initiatives including the ARO MURI on Opportunistic Sensing from 2013-2018 and the ONR MURI on Foundations of Deep Learning from 2020-2025. His scholarly impact extends beyond traditional academic metrics, with his work catalyzing new approaches to signal processing that have influenced both theoretical frameworks and commercial applications across multiple industries including medical imaging and wireless communications.
Beyond his technical contributions, Dr. Baraniuk has revolutionized educational access through his founding and direction of OpenStax, which has saved U.S. college students more than $1.2 billion in textbook costs through its open educational resources. His leadership extends to SafeInsights, an NSF-funded national research infrastructure for learning and education that advances data-driven approaches to improving educational outcomes. As a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has received numerous prestigious honors including the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Norbert Wiener Society Award, and the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education for his transformative impact on both engineering research and educational technology. Dr. Baraniuk continues to shape the future of engineering education and computational approaches to complex problems through his ongoing work at the intersection of signal processing, machine learning, and open knowledge dissemination.
