Nicknamed “The godmother of digital image» by the New York Times, Daubechies’ research into wavelet theory – a refinement of Fourier’s technique – is the basis of much of today’s image processing technology, including image compression and denoising. ‘picture. Every time you go to the cinema, each frame has been compressed using the Daubechies wavelet-based method.
“Ingrid invented a very elegant way of storing important information in images, which preserves edges and allows compression, but also allows almost perfect reconstruction of the image, even from highly compressed versions of it. ” said Cynthia RudinGilbert, Louis and Edward Lehrman, professor emeritus of IT.
Kristina Johnson honored by Biden
President Biden also announced that Kristina Johnson, former dean of the Pratt School of Engineering, would receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
A pioneer in applications of liquid crystals, including microdisplays for high-definition projection television, Johnson served as dean of Pratt from 1999 to 2007. She left Duke to become dean of Johns Hopkins University and also served as chancellor of the State University of New York. York and president of The Ohio State University.
The elegance of Daubechies’ technique comes from the mathematical derivation of wavelets. “This derivation propelled Ingrid to legendary status in the mathematical world as well as among electrical engineers,” said Rudin, who also holds positions in statistical sciences, mathematics, electrical and computer engineering, as well as biostatistics and bioinformatics.
Armed with her elegant mathematics and unwavering curiosity, Daubechies spent much of her career challenge disciplinary boundariesweaving through areas as disparate as restoration of works of art and evolutionary biology.
“We join so many in congratulating Ingrid on this exciting recognition of her life’s work and the far-reaching impact of her research, scholarship and mentorship,” said Gary Bennett, dean from Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. “Beyond her historic discoveries in the fields of mathematics and engineering, Ingrid tirelessly campaigns for an increase in the number of women in science. We are beyond proud of what she has accomplished and how she is changing Duke and the world for the better.
Her early work helped the FBI extract millions of fingerprints from computers in the 1990s. She worked with geologists to peer beneath the Earth’s crust, analyzing seismograms from earthquakes. She teamed up with neuroscientists and cardiologists to read MRI images of brain activity and EKG patterns.
Using one of his techniques for comparing 3D shapes, Daubechies worked with fossil experts, analyzing scans of bones and teeth to learn more about an extinct animal’s diet or locomotion patterns . In a completely different type of museum, Daubechies and his team used wavelets and machine learning to distinguish fakes from genuine Vincent van Gogh works. The ensuing collaboration between mathematicians, computer scientists, museum curators and art historians led to algorithms used to this day and to mathematically restoring works of art cracked, discolored or reduced to ruins by war bombings .
“I really get a lot of joy from seeing creativity at work in any field; it doesn’t have to be a scientific field,” Daubechies said in an interview with the Simon’s Foundation Flatiron Institute.
Born in Houthalen, Belgium, Daubechies studied theoretical physics at Vrije Universiteit, Brussels, the same institution where she earned a doctorate in quantum physics in 1980. In the United States, she conducted research at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey before moving to Princeton. Faculty of the university in 1993, where she became the first woman to become a full professor of mathematics.
This is just one of many “firsts” in Daubechies’ career. In 2000, she was the first woman to receive the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Mathematics. A decade later, she was the first woman elected president of the International Mathematical Union. In 2018, she was the first female recipient of the William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics. She is a 1992 MacArthur Fellow, a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, and has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, she was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard University and the L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science Prize. She received the 2023 Wolf Prize in Mathematicsand, in 2024, was elected to Royal Society of London.
Rather than boasting about such accomplishments, Daubechies has worked hard to help make the concept of “first woman to” a thing of the past, tirelessly advocating for breaking gender barriers in STEM. “I feel like I succeed by being part of a bigger whole,” she says. told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s really a man’s thing to want your effigy. Perhaps this is why women have been so forgotten.
Daubechies, along with the 13 other National Medal of Science recipients named Friday, will receive the medal from the president later this year in a ceremony at the White House.
At Duke, she will join Robert LefkowitzChancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Medicine, who was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2008, as the recipient of this prestigious honor.