Ali Naci Akansu (born May 6, 1958) is a

Turkish-American Turkish Americans () or American Turks are Americans of ethnic Turkish origin. The term "Turkish Americans" can therefore refer to ethnic Turkish immigrants to the United States, as well as their American-born descendants, who originate eith ...

professor of electrical & computer engineering and scientist in

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematics, mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and Industrial sector, industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a ...

. He is best known for his contributions to the theory and applications of

linear subspace In mathematics, the term ''linear'' is used in two distinct senses for two different properties: * linearity of a ''function (mathematics), function'' (or ''mapping (mathematics), mapping''); * linearity of a ''polynomial''. An example of a li ...

methods including sub-band and wavelet transforms, particularly the

binomial QMF A binomial QMF – properly an orthonormal binomial quadrature mirror filter – is an orthogonal wavelet developed in 1990. The binomial QMF bank with perfect reconstruction (PR) was designed by Ali Akansu, and published in 1990, using the famil ...

(also known as

Daubechies wavelet The Daubechies wavelets, based on the work of Ingrid Daubechies, are a family of orthogonal wavelets defining a discrete wavelet transform and characterized by a maximal number of vanishing moments for some given support. With each wavelet ...

) and the multivariate framework to design statistically optimized

filter bank In signal processing, a filter bank (or filterbank) is an array of bandpass filters that separates the input signal into multiple components, each one carrying a sub-band of the original signal. One application of a filter bank is a graphic equal ...

(eigen filter bank).

Biography

Akansu received his B.S. degree from the

Istanbul Technical University Istanbul Technical University, also known as Technical University of Istanbul (, commonly referred to as İTÜ), is an public university, public technical university located in Istanbul, Turkey. It is the world's third-oldest technical university ...

, Turkey, in 1980, his M.S. and PhD degrees from the Polytechnic University (now

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

), Brooklyn, New York, in 1983 and 1987, respectively, all in Electrical Engineering. Since 1987, he has been with the

New Jersey Institute of Technology New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) is a Public university, public research university in Newark, New Jersey, United States, with a graduate-degree-granting satellite campus in Jersey City. Founded in 1881 with the support of local indust ...

where he is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was a visiting professor at

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU). Founded in 1935, it is named after Richard Courant, one of the founders of the Courant Institute ...

of the

, 2009–2010. In 1990, he showed that the binomial quadrature mirror filter bank (binomial QMF) is identical to the

filter, and interpreted and evaluated its performance from a discrete-time signal processing perspective. It was an extension of his prior work on

Binomial coefficient In mathematics, the binomial coefficients are the positive integers that occur as coefficients in the binomial theorem. Commonly, a binomial coefficient is indexed by a pair of integers and is written \tbinom. It is the coefficient of the t ...

and

Hermite polynomials In mathematics, the Hermite polynomials are a classical orthogonal polynomial sequence. The polynomials arise in: * signal processing as Hermitian wavelets for wavelet transform analysis * probability, such as the Edgeworth series, as well a ...

that he developed the Modified Hermite Transformation (MHT) in 1987. The magnitude square functions of Binomial-QMF filters were shown to be the unique maximally flat functions in a two-band PR-QMF design formulation. He organized the first

wavelet A wavelet is a wave-like oscillation with an amplitude that begins at zero, increases or decreases, and then returns to zero one or more times. Wavelets are termed a "brief oscillation". A taxonomy of wavelets has been established, based on the n ...

conference in the United States at NJIT in April 1990, and, then in 1992 and 1994. Together with Richard A. Haddad, he published the first

-related engineering book in the literature entitled ''Multiresolution Signal Decomposition: Transforms, Subbands and Wavelets'' in 1992. He made contributions in the areas of optimal filter banks, nonlinear phase extensions of discrete Walsh-

Hadamard transform The Hadamard transform (also known as the Walsh–Hadamard transform, Hadamard–Rademacher–Walsh transform, Walsh transform, or Walsh–Fourier transform) is an example of a generalized class of Fourier transforms. It performs an orthogonal ...

and

discrete Fourier transform In mathematics, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) converts a finite sequence of equally-spaced Sampling (signal processing), samples of a function (mathematics), function into a same-length sequence of equally-spaced samples of the discre ...

principal component analysis Principal component analysis (PCA) is a linear dimensionality reduction technique with applications in exploratory data analysis, visualization and data preprocessing. The data is linearly transformed onto a new coordinate system such that th ...

of first-order autoregressive process,

sparse approximation Sparse approximation (also known as sparse representation) theory deals with sparse solutions for systems of linear equations. Techniques for finding these solutions and exploiting them in applications have found wide use in image processing, signa ...

digital watermarking A digital watermark is a kind of marker covertly embedded in a noise-tolerant signal such as audio, video or image data.H.T. Sencar, M. Ramkumar and A.N. Akansu: ''Data Hiding Fundamentals and Applications: Content Security in Digital Multimedia'' ...

financial signal processing Financial signal processing is a branch of signal processing technologies which applies to signals within financial markets. They are often used by quantitative analysts to make best estimation of the movement of financial markets, such as stock ...

and

quantitative finance Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling in the financial field. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that requ ...

. Akansu was a founding director of the New Jersey Center for Multimedia Research (NJCMR), 1996–2000, and NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Digital Video, 1998–2000. He was the vice president for research and development of the

IDT Corporation IDT Corporation (originally standing for International Discount Telecommunications) is a multinational provider of cloud communications, point of sale systems, unified communications, and financial services foreign exchange services for selecte ...

, 2000–2001, the founding president and CEO of PixWave, Inc. (an

IDT Entertainment Starz Distribution, formerly IDT Entertainment from 2003 to 2006 and Starz Media from 2006 to 2013, is an American television production, distribution, and syndication company and the distribution arm of Starz Inc., a subsidiary of Starz Ente ...

subsidiary) that has built the technology for secure

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

video distribution over the Internet. He was an academic visitor at David Sarnoff Research Center (

Sarnoff Corporation Sarnoff Corporation was a research-and-development company specializing in vision, video, and semiconductor technology. It was named for David Sarnoff, the longtime leader of RCA and NBC, and had headquarters in West Windsor Township, New Jersey, ...

), at IBM's

Thomas J. Watson Research Center The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. Its main laboratory is in Yorktown Heights, New York, 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City. It also operates facilities in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Albany, ...

, and at

Marconi Electronic Systems Marconi Electronic Systems Limited (MES), or GEC-Marconi as it was until 1998, was the defence arm of General Electric Company (GEC). It was split off from GEC and bought by British Aerospace (BAe) on 30 November 1999 to form BAE Systems. GEC ...

. He is an

IEEE Fellow , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

(since 2008) with the citation ''for contributions to optimal design of transforms and filter banks for communications and multimedia security.'' According to the

Mathematics Genealogy Project The Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians.. it contained information on 300,152 mathematical scientists who contributed to research-level mathematics. For a typical mathematicia ...

, as of October 2023, Akansu had a total of 25 doctorate students.http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=74955 ''Mathematics Genealogy Project : Ali Naci Akansu ''

Selected works

* * * * * *

References

External links

Ali Akansu's home page
*

* ttp://web.njit.edu/~akansu/NJITSYMP1990/AkansuNJIT1STWAVELETSSYMPAPRIL301990.pdf Binomial-QMF Daubechies Wavelets
NJIT Symposia on Subbands and Wavelets 1990, 1992, 1994, 1997

IDT Entertainment Sold to Liberty Media for 186 Million and Interest in IDT
*

Starz Distribution Starz Distribution, formerly IDT Entertainment from 2003 to 2006 and Starz Media from 2006 to 2013, is an American television production, distribution, and syndication company and the distribution arm of Starz Inc., a subsidiary of Starz Ente ...

A Disgusted CEO Is A Good CEO, Says New Study (At Least For Shareholders)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Akansu, Ali Turkish expatriate academics in the United States 21st-century Turkish mathematicians Turkish electrical engineers 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Istanbul Technical University alumni New Jersey Institute of Technology faculty Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni Turkish emigrants to the United States Living people Kabataş Erkek Lisesi alumni Fellows of the IEEE Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty American academics of Turkish descent 1958 births