Shihab Shamma wins outstanding faculty award

Professor Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) is the recipient of the ISR Outstanding Faculty Award. He was nominated for this award by Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR), who has collaborated with him on wavelet representations of signals, sound localization, and sound source separation.

In his work over the last decade, Shamma has pursued some of the deepest questions about the brain, including the ways in which the receptive fields adjust their response characteristics based on experience – the problem of neural plasticity. He has developed novel stimuli and experimental protocols to carry out these investigations. This work has also led him to explore the relationships that exist between auditory and the visual areas of the brain.

Shamma’s contributions to science are in hearing research. His primary focus has been to uncover the computational principles underlying the processing and recognition of complex sounds (speech and music) in the auditory system.

The work of his group has led to signal processing algorithms for applications in a variety of contexts, including speech and speaker recognition, diagnostics in manufacturing processes, and battlefield acoustics.

Additionally, he has guided the development of new cochlear processing chips and VLSI implementations of auditory processing algorithms for use in robotics.

At the Institute for Systems Research, Shamma has stimulated the participation of undergraduates in research through the Gemstone program. His leadership has been influential in creating a high quality Ph.D. program in neuroscience and cognitive science on campus, and in attracting outstanding faculty to ISR. He created active multi-disciplinary groups to develop successful research projects supported by the DOD MURI and DARPA programs.

Shihab Shamma is a recognized world leader in his field and has brought distinction to the University of Maryland through his many contributions and to ISR through his active involvement in its research programs

Published May 11, 2007