The National Academy of Inventors has named Vishal Monga, professor of electrical engineering, to its 2022 class of senior members. Credit: Kelby Hochreither/Penn State.
Engineering professor named senior member of the National Academy of Inventors
Feb 21, 2022
By Sarah Small
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Professor of Electrical Engineering Vishal Monga has been named a 2022 senior member of the National Academy of Inventors.
Senior members are among “the world’s best emerging academic inventors” and have “demonstrated remarkable innovation producing technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society,” according to the NAI’s press release. This year’s class has more than 1,093 issued U.S. patents among the 83 newly elected members.
“This is a prestigious recognition for noteworthy contributions to the scientific community — one Dr. Monga richly deserves,” said Justin Schwartz, Harold and Inge Marcus Dean in the College of Engineering. “Dr. Monga, who holds 45 U.S. patents, has a prolific record of innovation and invention that has significantly advanced the field of consumer and medical imaging.”
Monga joined the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in August 2009. He also has been a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, and a visiting faculty member at the University of Rochester. Monga's research was recognized with a 2015 National Science Foundation CAREER award, and he received the 2019 Penn State Engineering Alumni Society Outstanding Research Award.
Prior to joining Penn State, Monga worked as an imaging scientist at the research labs of Xerox Corp. from 2005 to 2009. His inventions at Xerox Labs in color look-up table design and in computational algorithms for color transforms can be found in high-end printers commercialized by Xerox and broadly in the imaging industry in LCD displays and cameras.
At Penn State, Monga has partnered with Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Nokia, the U.S. Navy Research Lab and Xerox PARC, generating intellectual property in artificial intelligence for image processing, with specific applications to cost-effective medical image synthesis.
“I am humbled to be in the company of distinguished global inventors,” Monga said. “My mission is to work with students toward imaging research that is both technically deep and practically impactful. I am grateful that this recognition validates our efforts.”
Monga and the rest of the 2022 senior members class will be inducted at the Senior Members Induction Ceremony at the 11th Annual Meeting of the NAI on June 14-15 in Phoenix.
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