On April 27 and 28, past and present colleagues, students, and alumni gathered at Rice University’s Duncan Hall to celebrate a momentous occasion—the 50th anniversary of Don Johnson’s career. Johnson, J.S. Abercrombie Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing and professor emeritus of statistics, was honored for his legacy of exemplary research, teaching, mentorship, and leadership. Johnson’s foundational work in digital signal processing has led to innovative applications in physics, neuroscience, statistics, and art forensics. He has made pioneering contributions to the open education movement.
To commemorate the occasion, the department also announced an annual Don Johnson teaching award to honor Johnson’s legacy of exemplary teaching over five decades at Rice.
The 50th anniversary celebrations kicked off with an informal dinner on April 27 and was followed by ‘A Digital Signal Processing Symposium in honor of Don Johnson’ in McMurtry Auditorium in Duncan Hall on April 28.
The symposium commenced with a warm welcome address by Johnson’s colleagues, Richard Baraniuk, C. Sidney Burrus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of statistics and computer science, Behnaam Aazhang, J.S. Abercrombie Professor and director of Rice Neuroengineering Initiative (NEI), and Ashok Veeraraghavan, chair of electrical and computer engineering, and professor of computer science. This was followed by a message from Rice President, Reginald DesRoches who sent his best wishes and added, “Johnson’s immense contributions have made Rice a better place.”
“It is a distinct pleasure and real honor to celebrate 50 years of Don’s distinguished career,” Veeraraghavan said. “Don’s contributions have significantly advanced digital signal processing and several other fields and deeply impacted engineering research and education—he along with Sidney Burrus and a few other faculty were instrumental in making Rice one of the pre-eminent places for digital signal processing research and education back when the field was just getting started. Most importantly, he has mentored so many of us here and many more around the world who couldn’t join us today, and we’ll always be very grateful for that.”
The full-day symposium, attended by more than 250 people, highlighted Johnson’s profound and lasting impact on various areas of research and education.
Johnson’s pioneering research on auditory signal processing laid the foundation for the mathematical and statistical frameworks that explained how single and clusters of neurons in the brain receive, encode, process, and respond to not just auditory, but all sensory cues. This work is helping to advance the development of neural prosthetics to treat neurological and psychological disorders. His contributions in non-Gaussian statistics—the analysis of data that does not follow typical distribution patterns—led to a deeper understanding of how various systems interpret optical and radio signals. These insights have led to significant improvements in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) used in healthcare and biomedical research.
Johnson made an incredible and lasting impact on art history, preservation, restoration, and forensics. He leveraged his expertise in digital signal processing to develop an automated method to analyze the weave pattern and thread count of canvases painted by world-renowned artists. This novel technique reveals critical archival information, which led to the identification and authentication of a previously unknown painting of Van Gogh, ‘The Sunset at Montmajour’ and is now being used by leading museums and art institutes to authenticate, date, and assess structural damage to their art collections.
In addition to publishing close to 400 research papers and authoring a biography titled, “The Oslo Person: The Biography of Hans Ferdinand Mayer," Johnson also co-founded Modulus Technologies, Inc., served as president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)'s Signal Processing Society, was recognized with both the Meritorious Service Award and the Distinguished Lecturer title, elected a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and received numerous prestigious teaching awards from Rice.
Johnson is a legendary educator who transformed how engineering is taught in high schools and universities. Up until the early 1990s, public high schools in the U.S. did not offer any engineering classes. Johnson helped to write the first engineering textbook for high school students. Thanks to his initiative, all 50 states in the U.S. now offer engineering courses at the high school level and many universities use his textbook for introductory courses. In collaboration with Baraniuk and others, he helped to lay the groundwork for a global open education resources movement with Connexions, a digital repository that predated Wikipedia and MIT OpenCourseWare and produced 24,000 educational modules in 40 languages that influenced organizations such as UNESCO and regional projects in Vietnam and Poland.
“I’ve had the privilege to collaborate with extraordinary people from across the globe, but no one has had a greater influence on me than Professor Johnson,” said Dr. Geoffrey Orsak, Executive Director of the Moody Innovation Institute and Johnson’s former graduate student. “He taught me a fearlessness in selecting big problems and a creative relentlessness in solving them.”
Several of Johnson’s past and current students and mentees echoed this sentiment and attributed their professional success to his incredible skills as a teacher and mentor. They recollected his uncanny ability to make complex engineering topics accessible and how he laid a solid foundation for their successful careers by teaching them to think critically, formulate the right questions, and to find creative and collaborative solutions.
"Don is truly a ‘Renaissance man’—an outstanding scholar and teacher in the best Rice tradition, a successful entrepreneur, a prolific technical innovator, and an impactful leader and mentor who has served his university and professional organization for more than two generations—and is a perfect role model for the next generation of scientists, engineers, and educators," said Rice alumnus, Dr. John Treichler, Chief Technical Officer at Applied Signal Technology, and Johnson’s former student.
The two-day celebration was a mix of science, humorous anecdotes, and heartfelt reminiscences by Johnson’s mentors, collaborators, coworkers, and students from around the world and across disciplines. It not only showcased Johnson’s deep impact on Rice and the world but also the incredible scientific community he has built and nurtured over the years.
“I’m deeply touched by the thought and effort my colleagues put into organizing a symposium of this scale and honored that the department has instituted an award in my name,” Johnson said. “It warmed my heart to see so many old students and collaborators join the celebration in person and online. I was able to build such close working relationships thanks largely to the collegial and collaborative environment of Rice and our department, where the students and faculty know each other well, students are encouraged to speak their mind and offer suggestions. Rice’s special environment shaped and influenced my interactions with external colleagues as well.”
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