Belgian professor receives highest US scientific award
Ingrid Daubechies, a Belgian physicist and mathematician, has been awarded the National Medal of Science by US President Joe Biden.
The National Medal of Science is awarded to people who are “deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, engineering, or social and behavioral sciences” in the United States, where the Limburg-born Daubechies has been working since the late 1980s.
Biden praised Daubechies for her exceptional contributions to science and technology, more specifically in signal and image processing. The more scientifically knowledgeable reader might have heard of the Daubechies wavelet, or of the Cohen-Daubechies-Feauveau wavelet used in JPEG 2000 images.
Daubechies’ Alma Mater, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, has said that “her elegant and innovative techniques have had a lasting impact not only on science, but also on the way mathematics is applied in our daily lives,” whether it’s in the film industry, the medical industry, or many more facets of life.
This presidential recognition comes less than a year after her winning the prestigious Wolf Prize in Mathematics for the same work.