IEEE Awards Booklet - 2012 - 10

I E E E

M E D A L S

2012 IEEE Medal for
Innovations in Healthcare Technology

2012 IEEE
Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal

Sponsored by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine
and Biology Society

Sponsored by Texas Instruments, Inc.

Savio L-Y. Woo

G. Clifford Carter

For pivotal contributions to biomechanics and its
application to orthopedic surgery and sports medicine

For contributions to the fundamentals of coherence and
time-delay estimation and to underwater acoustics signal
processing

Savio L-Y. Woo's pioneering biomechanics research has profoundly impacted sports medicine and the management of
ligament and tendon injuries, leading to improved patient
recovery. From research at the cellular and tissue level to developing computer and robotic models of joints, Dr. Woo, together
with his six hundred students, post-doctoral fellows, and colleagues, has provided key insight to understanding the function
of bone and connective tissue and has led sports medicine and
orthopedic surgery into the 21st Century. Dr. Woo helped
develop the "controlled motion is good" concept, showing the
benefits of joint movement and early weight-bearing activities
during rehabilitation compared to immobilization following
surgery. His approach to robotic testing of knee and shoulder
movement helped define the beneficial effects of motion. He
applied computer modeling and robotic technology to study
joint mechanics and the effects of injury on joint function. Dr.
Woo used robots to produce motions that occur during everyday
activities and to determine the forces that the motions generate
in the ligaments of the joints. Dr. Woo's work has resulted in
much faster recovery time for patients with soft-tissue injuries.
More recently, he has focused on using novel functional tissue
engineering to heal and regenerate ligaments and tendons at
the cellular, tissue, and organ levels using bioscaffolds. Dr. Woo
began his career at the University of California, San Diego, as a
professor of surgery and bioengineering in 1970 and moved to
the University of Pittsburgh in 1990, where he founded the
Musculoskeletal Research Center (MSRC).

G. Clifford Carter's pioneering contributions to determining and
using coherence and time-delay estimation have had lasting
impact on the field of signal processing including sonar
detection, classification, and localization. Dr. Carter's algorithms
are used today in applications ranging from underwater
acoustics for the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet to healthcare. Dr.
Carter's research on generalized correlation methods for timedelay estimation resulted in what is considered a landmark
paper in the signal processing field. Published in 1976, he
presented powerful methods of statistically optimum processing for estimating the relative delay of a random signal received
by two sensors in the presence of noise. The generalized correlation algorithm became one of signal processing's most
fundamental algorithms and is still used in numerous signal processing systems. Dr. Carter's pioneering work on defining and
statistically characterizing the coherence function and providing
an algorithm was significant to the development of high-definition sonar. He determined the limitations on length and
resolution for sonar arrays necessary for handling partially
coherent oceanic noise fields. Dr. Carter provided an understanding of how to measure signal coherence in these noise
fields and determine confidence limits. His automatic coherent
processing algorithms are used in the U.S. Navy's acoustic surveillance processing systems. His more recent patented work
includes a close-range sonar system that provides sufficient
warning to allow maneuvering to avoid collisions, overcoming
the signal processing problems presented by ship's own noise.

Dr. Woo is currently a Distinguished University Professor and
Director of the MSRC within the University of Pittsburgh's
Department of Bioengineering and Swanson School of
Engineering, Pittsburgh, Pa.

An IEEE Life Fellow, Dr. Carter retired from the Naval Undersea
Warfare Center Division Newport, Newport, R.I., in 2009 as a
senior technologist for acoustic signal processing.

Scope: For outstanding contributions and/or innovations in engineering within the fields of medicine, biology, and healthcare
technology

Scope: For outstanding achievements in signal processing

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2012