Research Title: Time-frequency/time-scale analysis, sparse signal representation theory, and finite field theory for signal processing applications
Institute: UCD

Scott Rickard received the Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics in 1992, the Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering in 1993, and the Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science also in 1993, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). His Master’s thesis focused on the generation of a large number of signals so that a group of sonobuoys could work in concert to create an underwater map of shipping lanes to allow for save passage of ships through mine-infested waters. From 1991 to 1993 he was also a research assistant at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts and worked on a prototype analog neural network computer and designed neural networks for mine detection from sonar images.

From 1993 to 2003 he was a member of technical staff at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, New Jersey. He spent 1995 and 1996 in Munich Germany with Siemens working in the Neural Networks Group. While with Siemens, he developed and applied machine learning technology to industrial problems such as vehicle navigation, automated image analysis, biomedical signal classification, and industrial plant state prediction. In 1999, he co-invented the DUET Blind Source Separation algorithm, a groundbreaking technique that solves the ‘Cocktail Party Problem’ and allows a small stereo microphone to focus on one person’s speech in the presence of many interfering speakers.

In 1999, he began his studies at Princeton University and received the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied and Computational Mathematics in 2000 and 2003 respectively. While at Princeton, he worked under the guidance of world-renowned Professors H. Vincent Poor, Sergio Verdu and Ingrid Daubechies, experts in wireless communications, information theory, and wavelets. His PhD thesis developed new models of the changing communication path between mobile wireless transmitters and receivers and he is currently working on using these models to increase the reliability and data rates of mobile wireless communication systems.

In 2003, Dr. Rickard joined the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at UCD where he continues his research in time-frequency/scale analysis, wireless communications, and blind source separation. Dr. Rickard has authored over 40 scientific articles in leading journals and international conferences. In addition, he is co-inventor on 12 US Patents. Dr. Rickard is also keenly interested in science, mathematics, and engineering education, at all levels, and is co-founder of www.sciencewithme.com and co-created www.roborugby.org.