Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 45) ing on the theory behind adaptive feedback systems, used to kill the echo you can sometimes hear while talking on the telephone. Then he created and analyzed blind equalization algorithms, used in receiving high-definition TV. In 2005, when he was ready to change his research focus once again, he began wondering how his expertise in signal processing could get him a backstage museum pass. Art historians and curators use a variety of technologies to study paintings, including X-radiography, infrared photography and UV fluorescence. While on a Fulbright scholarship in Paris, Johnson arranged a lunch meeting with a curator at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. He offered his services as a translator, helping the art history experts communicate with technical types doing image processing. While preparing a presentation to museum management, Johnson discovered that these tools helped de-attribute the very painting that awakened his passion for art in the first place. In 1985, the Rembrandt Research Project determined “The Man with the Golden Helmet” was not painted by Rembrandt but by an unnamed apprentice. The museum liked the idea of having an expert in signal processing to help connect them with computer-based technology used in painting authentication and gave Johnson a five-year appointment as an adjunct research fel- low. “I’m like a PhD student again, working for the head of conservation at the Van Gogh Museum,” he says. “Whether the data comes from a CAT scan or a satellite or a painting, it becomes an array of numbers to which the kit of signal processing tools can be applied.” Beyond determining if a painting is really by a master or just a clever forgery, forensic signal processing can help art historians determine the sequence of an artist’s work or deconstruct a painter’s process by identifying which strokes went on first. “There are a lot of things I think [curators] can think of that would be impossible, but there are a lot of things we should be able to do,” says Johnson. “Any time the art historians look at the image for the infor- mation they need, we should be able to help.” In a year or so, Johnson envisions teaching a new course at Cornell examining how others have approached using signal processing to authenticate art so students can infer a general approach to the problem. He hopes his interaction with the museum will eventually result in a textbook that combines art history with technical material. “I’m not an engineering professor just because I want to tinker with cool things,” he says. “I’m an academic because I want to teach cool things.” GT This article from the spring 2008 Cornell Engineering Magazine is reprinted by permission. Robert Emro is a communications specialist in the College of Engineering. Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2008 45
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