Obama recognizes Rice innovator
Alum Justin Romberg of Georgia Tech wins presidential award

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

Numbers have been very good to Rice alum Justin Romberg. President Barack Obama has provided the proof.

Romberg, who earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering at Rice University, the last in 2004, has been named a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), given to promising researchers at the outset of their professional careers.

	JUSTIN ROMBERG

Now an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, Romberg joins another Rice alum, Erica Ollmann Saphire ’93, an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute, among the 100 recipients of the award named by Obama on July 9.

They will receive the honors in a fall ceremony at the White House.

“The award is tied to a grant I got from the Office of Naval Research last year,” Romberg said. “When you get one of these grants, you’re considered for this larger award. In fact, I’m already spending the money.”

Romberg, whose adviser at Rice was Richard Baraniuk, the Victor E. Cameron Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, is working for the Navy on compressive sampling for next-generation data acquisition. “We have cameras and other types of sensors that produce massive amounts of data at a rate we can’t really handle,” he said. “We’re trying to integrate some of the compression into the sensing process itself.

“A lot of research in this area takes place at Rice, and in fact we have a very active project for the Department of Defense that Rich and his Rice crew are also involved with. We’re trying to capture high-frequency radar signals in ways that aren’t possible with today’s receivers.”

“Justin really exemplifies the kind of creativity and dedication that Rice students bring to the world,” said Baraniuk, noting that Romberg’s work was a critical element in the creation of Rice’s famous single-pixel camera, which relies on compressive sensing to create images.

Romberg has extended his expertise to Hollywood as a consultant to the CBS television show “Numb3rs.” He checks scripts for accuracy and plausibility before they go into production.

Of his 10 years in Houston, Romberg said, “I feel very blessed to have had the mentorship and education I got at Rice. It’s a special place, and it influenced me intellectually as well as professionally.”