Edward J Coyle

Biographical Information: Narrative Biography

Edward J. Coyle received his BSEE degree from the University of Delaware in 1978, and Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University in 1980 and 1982. From 1982 to 2007, he was with Purdue University, where his activities included service as Co-Director of the Center for Wireless Systems and Applications (CWSA), Director of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative (SEI), Co-Founder of the VIP and EPICS Programs, and Assistant Vice Provost for Research in Computing and Communications. Since January 1, 2008, he has been with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, where is the Arbutus Chair and a GRA Eminent Scholar.

His research interests include computer and sensor networks, signal and image processing, and engineering education. He was a co-recipient of both the Myril B. Reed Best Paper Award from the 32nd Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems and the 1986 Best Paper Award for Authors under 30 from the Signal Processing Society of the IEEE. He has served as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems and was an elected member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He was the general chair of the 1997 IEEE/EURASIP Workshop on Nonlinear Signal and Image Processing. Dr. Coyle is a Fellow of the IEEE and in 1998 was named an Outstanding Engineering Alumnus of the University of Delaware.

Dr. Coyle is a co-founder of the Vertically-Integrated Projects (VIP) Program, an engineering education program that operates in a research and development context. Undergraduate students that join VIP teams earn academic credit for their participation in design efforts that assist faculty and graduate students with research and development issues in their areas of technical expertise. The teams are: multidisciplinary -- drawing students from across engineering; vertically-integrated -- maintaining a mix of sophomores through PhD students each semester; and long-term -- each undergraduate student may participate in a project for up to seven semesters. The continuity, technical depth, and disciplinary breadth of these teams enable the completion of projects of significant benefit to faculty members' research programs.

He was also a co-founder of the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) Program at Purdue and the National EPICS Program, which supports and coordinates EPICS sites at Purdue and 18 other universities. Further information about EPICS is available at http://epics.ecn.purdue.edu/. For his work with the EPICS Program, Professors Coyle was a co-recipient of ECE's 1997 Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award, Purdue's Class of 1922 Award for Outstanding Innovation in Helping Students Learn, and the 1997 Chester F. Carlson Award for Innovation in Engineering Education from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The EPICS Program has been honored with several awards, including the Corporate and Foundation Alliance Award and, from the State of Indiana, the Inaugural Governor's Award for Outstanding Volunteerism. Coyle was also a co-recipient, with Leah Jamieson and William Oakes, of the National Academy of Engineering's 2005 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.