2022 IEEE President Ok.J. Ray Liu Honored for Management

In contrast to many budding engineers, Ok.J. Ray Liu wasn’t impressed to enter the sphere by tinkering with electronics or following within the footsteps of a member of the family. Rising up in Taichung, Taiwan, he answered his authorities’s name for college students to turn into electrical engineers to assist manufacture semiconductors within the Nineteen Seventies, when the nation’s economic system was struggling.

“College students who have been good in math, science, and physics all needed to be {an electrical} engineer as a result of that was the highest precedence of the federal government,” Liu says. “That’s how I bought into engineering. Now Taiwan is a world chief in semiconductors.”

However by the point he graduated from college in 1983, semiconductor services have been nonetheless underneath building, so there have been no jobs out there.

As an alternative, he went on to have a profitable profession as an educator and entrepreneur within the United States.

For 31 years, he was a professor of data expertise and a digital sign processing researcher on the College of Maryland in School Park till he retired in 2021.

Liu was the chairman, CEO, and CTO of Origin Wi-fi, a startup he based in Rockville, Md. Origin, which was acquired by ADT in February, pioneers synthetic intelligence for wi-fi sensing and indoor monitoring.

Liu, an IEEE Fellow, is an lively IEEE volunteer who served because the group’s president in 2022.

IEEE honored him with this yr’s Haraden Pratt Award for “transformative and impactful management.”

Liu is credited with rising the variety of nominees for IEEE’s Fellow program, which is the best degree of membership. He additionally led the hassle to realign the group’s areas geographically to make sure extra equitable international illustration on the IEEE Board of Administrators.

He obtained the Pratt honor on 24 April throughout a ceremony in New York Metropolis. The IEEE Basis sponsored the Board-level award.

“Greater than something, I share the honour with the volunteers and employees I had the privilege to work alongside,” he says. “Our exhausting work is fueled by our shared devotion to this skilled residence we love and look after a lot.”

Within the Nineteen Seventies, Taiwan’s policymakers determined to enhance the nation’s economic system by pivoting from making merchandise akin to footwear and umbrellas to manufacturing electronics.

The business bought its begin in 1976 when RCA, a significant electronics firm on the time, agreed to switch licensed semiconductor processes to Taiwan’s Industrial Expertise Analysis Institute. ITRI spun off a number of semiconductor-related corporations together with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. TSMC, launched in 1987, is the world’s largest devoted semiconductor foundry.

Liu graduated in 1983 with a bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering from Nationwide Taiwan College, in Taipei. On the time, there have been no semiconductor corporations to work for, he says.

“These days, most of the nation’s college graduates go proper to TSMC to get a job,” he says. “However again then, there was no actual job market.

“Most of my classmates—together with me—got here to the U.S. for graduate research. Many people stayed and, during the last three to 4 a long time, contributed to the event of digital laptop communication expertise within the U.S.”

Liu left Taiwan after a two-year necessary stint within the Republic of China Armed Forces to attend the College of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, the place in 1987 he earned a grasp’s diploma in electrical engineering.

“If I may also help make IEEE a greater skilled residence for future members, that’s one thing that I pays again to IEEE.”

He went on to earn a Ph.D. in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering in 1990 from the College of California, Los Angeles. His curiosity in digital sign processing and very-large-scale integration (VLSI) was sparked whereas at UCLA. In the present day VLSI powers all fashionable electronics.

“Once I was a graduate scholar, there was no wi-fi communication. All people had a landline,” he explains.

VLSI was an necessary, lively analysis area on the time.

“My analysis curiosity was digital sign processing,” he says. “In the future I noticed a e-book on VLSI sign processing on my professor’s bookshelf. I instantly thought to myself: That’s the area I need to pursue.

“VLSI is one lane, digital sign processing is the opposite, and there’s a bridge linking the 2. I used to be fascinated with each areas, so I did my Ph.D. thesis on VLSI sign processing.”

After graduating, Liu joined the College of Maryland, the place he’s credited with establishing its sign processing analysis program.

Along with instructing, he performed analysis on a broad vary of sign processing and communication elements. The matters embody bioinformatics, sport principle, sign processing algorithms and architectures, and wi-fi sensing and communications.

He has authored greater than 10 books and 900 papers, and he holds 250 patents. You will discover his analysis papers within the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

Ambient-sensing trailblazer

Liu is taken into account to be a pioneer within the area of ambient sensing. The expertise gathers environmental knowledge and is utilized in safety techniques and health-monitoring gadgets.

He got here up with the concept, he says, whereas engaged on a venture in 2009 for the U.S. Navy. He was attempting to unravel an issue the Navy was having with the wi-fi communication techniques utilized in its submarines. As a result of submarines are product of metallic, radio waves have been unable to penetrate the vessels’ compartments and as an alternative bounced round, creating interference, he says.

His answer was to make use of a comparatively unknown idea in physics: time-reversal sign processing. The method captures waves, akin to sound and electromagnetic indicators, and sends them again by means of the identical medium in reverse, flipping the sign from last-in to first-out, and re-emits them.

“By utilizing time-reversal feed, we may enhance the signal-to-noise ratio by 4 instances,” he says. “That improved efficiency dramatically.”

He grew to become fascinated by the physics of time-reversal sign processing, he says, and puzzled how he may apply the idea to serve society. After three years of analysis, he got here up with the concept of utilizing wi-fi sensing purposes by means of ambient radio waves from surrounding Wi-Fi networks.

“I realized to show Wi-Fi networks into sensing networks that decipher our actions,” he says. “We may know every little thing occurring round us—our motions, respiratory, heartbeat, even fall detection—with none wearables.”

Via the college’s incubator, which inspires college to work on tasks with an impression on society, he launched Origin in 2013. The corporate’s Wi-FI and AI sensing expertise permits correct indoor monitoring, movement detection, and well being monitoring with out the necessity for wearable gadgets or cameras. Its merchandise, together with its distant affected person monitoring, obtained three innovation awards on the 2020 and 2021 Shopper Electronics exhibits, together with one for finest innovation.

Discovering his skilled residence

Liu joined IEEE in 1986 as a graduate scholar to entry its analysis papers, he says.

“In the event you didn’t be a part of an IEEE society, you didn’t get its journal—which meant that you simply couldn’t learn essentially the most up-to-date analysis papers,” he says. “So, I joined the IEEE Sign Processing Society. Once I attended my first sign processing convention, I knew I had discovered an expert residence. I met many like-minded folks, and collectively, we constructed an expert residence for our members worldwide.”

He grew to become an lively volunteer, holding prime management positions together with 2012–2013 president of the Sign Processing Society and 2016–2017 director of IEEE Division IX, which covers societies centered on sign processing, knowledge transmission, navigation, and transportation. In 2019 he was vice chairman of the Technical Actions Board.

In 2022 he served as IEEE president and CEO. The three accomplishments throughout his time period he says he’s most happy with are rising the prize cash for the IEEE Medal of Honor, overseeing the realignment of IEEE areas, and establishing higher monetary transparency.

The explanation for rising the prize for IEEE’s highest award—from US $50,000 to $2 million—in 2025, he says, was to underscore the significance of the applied sciences the IEEE neighborhood develops. These improvements embody semiconductors, the Web, and the GPU. The cash for the Medal of Honor now exceeds that of the Nobel Prize, which carries an award of roughly $1 million.

“We’d like the entire world to grasp the IEEE neighborhood has made essentially the most impression on society within the final century,” Liu says. “Nonetheless, we didn’t obtain the eye and respect we deserved, so we would have liked to assist ourselves. We wish the entire world to know what our contributions are.”

His subsequent achievement was realigning IEEE’s areas. Through the previous a number of years, membership in Area 10, which covers nations in Asia and the Pacific, has grown from 10 p.c of whole membership to almost 40 p.c, he says. It’s the largest and most populous of IEEE’s geographic areas, however its members weren’t equitably represented on the Board of Administrators. Every area had one consultant on the Board.

“The area has 40 p.c of the members however solely makes up 10 p.c of the Board,” Liu says. “That didn’t make sense to a number of us.”

The IEEE Board in 2022 authorized area realignment. The overall variety of areas stays at 10, however their group is altering. Efficient 1 January 2028, the six U.S.-based areas shall be consolidated into 5, and Area 10 shall be break up into two. IEEE will not use the Area 1 designation. The brand new Area 2 will symbolize the Northeastern and Jap U.S. Area 10 will cowl North Asia, and the brand new Area 11 will symbolize South Asia and the Pacific.

Liu additionally succeeded in main a motion that persuaded the IEEE Board to put money into a greater monetary reporting system to have a clearer understanding of the group’s funds. A extra fashionable system now tracks banking transactions, contracts, expense reviews, and different spending.

“Now we all know precisely the place the cash comes from and the place it’s spent,” he says, “in order that we are able to make extra knowledgeable choices.

“If I may also help make IEEE a greater skilled residence for future members, that’s one thing that I pays again to IEEE,” he provides. “I really recognize what IEEE supplied me. From scholar to professor to a longtime chief, at each stage, it supplied me totally different alternatives to develop. That’s the reason I labored very exhausting after I was president to ensure all people realizes it’s a skilled residence for our whole profession.”