K. J. Ray Liu
Founder, former CEO, now Chairman and CTO, Origin Wireless AI
2022 IEEE President and CEO
Distinguished University Professor (Ret.) and Christine Kim Eminent Professor of Information Technology, University of Maryland, College Park
Dr. Liu is the founder, former CEO, and now Chairman and CTO of Origin Wireless that pioneers AI for wireless sensing and indoor tracking. The inventions/technology/products of wireless AI won three prestigious CES Innovation Awards, including CES Best of Innovation in 2021; 2017 CEATEC Grand Prix; 2020 Red Dot Design Award, and among other awards.
He was 2022 IEEE President and CEO. He strived to "Make IEEE Your Professional Home", a motto that defines his IEEE Presidency. He has served as the IEEE Vice President, Technical Activities (2019), Division IX Director of IEEE Board of Directors (2016-17), and the President of IEEE Signal Processing Society (2012-13), in which he has also served as Vice President - Publications (2006-08) and a member on the Board of Governor. He was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2003-05). Dr. Liu was a founder of Asia-Pacific Association of Signal and Information Processing (APSIPA).
Dr. Liu was a Distinguished University Professor, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and Christine Kim Eminent Professor of Information Technology of the University of Maryland, College Park, from where he retired at the end of 2021 after over three decades of career in education. Over the past decades, he has trained over 70 Ph.D. and postdoctoral students, of which 13 are now IEEE fellows, about thirty of whom are with major universities worldwide, and the rest are entrepreneurs or active members in industry. According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, he has had over 200+ Ph.D. descendants.
His research contributions encompass broad aspects of signal processing and communications, including wireless sensing; indoor positioning/tracking; wireless communications; network science; game theory; multimedia signal processing; information forensics and security; bioinformatics; and signal processing algorithms and architectures, in which he has published over 10 books, 800 refereed papers, and 200 patents.
Dr. Liu is the recipient of two IEEE Technical Field Awards:
the 2021 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing with the citation “For outstanding leadership in and pioneering contributions to signal processing for wireless sensing and communications”,
the 2016 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award " for exemplary teaching and curriculum development, inspirational mentoring of graduate students, and broad educational impact in signal processing and communications".
He is also the recipient of numerous honors and awards including,
IEEE Signal Processing Society 2014 Norbert Wiener Society Award for "influential technical contributions and profound leadership impact" (the highest award bestowed by SPS)
IEEE Signal Processing Society 2009 Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award "for pioneering and outstanding contributions for the advances of signal processing in multimedia forensics, security, and wireless communications".
Recognized by Web of Science as a Highly Cited Researcher(2001-2014, 2016-17), Dr. Liu is a member of National Academy of Engineering (2024) for contributions to signal processing for wireless sensing and communications, and a fellow of the IEEE (2003), AAAS (2008), and National Academy of Inventors (2019). He is honored as 2021 Distinguished Alumni of National Taiwan University. His research was featured as one of seven technologies that IEEE believes will have the world changing implications on the way humans interact with machines, the world and each other, in honor of IEEE's 125th Anniversary.
He also received APSIPA 2018 Grand Award; 1994 National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award; IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer; over a dozen of best paper/invention awards; IEEE Signal Processing Society Meritorious Service Award, IEEE Technical Activities Board Hall of Honors, and EURASIP Meritorious Service Award.
Dr. Liu and his Origin team invented the world’s first centimeter-accuracy indoor positioning and tracking system using the fundamental principle of time reversal, even under non-line-of-sight conditions with only a single commodity WiFi device. His team discovered that due to a large number of multipaths, the time-reversal focusing effect exhibits an energy distribution whose stationary behavior can be harnessed to accurately estimate speed under severe indoor multipaths, a groundbreaking fundamental discovery that broke the impasse of 170+ years of search for such a solution since the Doppler Effect.
With that as the foundation, his Origin team developed a wireless AI platform enabling a wide range of device-free, non-obtrusive sensing technology, including vital signs detection, sleep monitoring events/activities recognition, fall detection, human biometric, and indoor navigation, without any wearables by using commodity ambient WiFi signals.
Dr. Liu was also the founder of Odyssey Technologies in 1997 pioneering the world’s first digital surveillance system over the Internet. The impact is everlasting with the ubiquitous uses of cameras for surveillance over the Internet nowadays, which is now a $50B industry.
During his over three decades of career as an educator, he received various research and teaching recognitions from the University of Maryland, including Poole and Kent Senior Faculty Teaching Award (2005), Outstanding Faculty Research Award (2008), and Outstanding Service Award (2012), (each with one award per year from the entire college), all from A. James Clark School of Engineering; Invention of the Year Award (for three times) from University’s Office of Technology Commercialization, as well as the George Corcoran Award for outstanding contributions to electrical engineering education from Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and the Outstanding Systems Engineering Faculty Award in recognition of outstanding contributions in interdisciplinary research from Institute for Systems Research.
He has delivered keynotes/plenaries in various international conferences and workshops and distinguished lectures in many universities/institutes worldwide. He has been consultants to industry and also has served occasionally as expert consultant/witness for legal proceedings. In addition, Dr. Liu also served in the review panels of centers of excellence from various nations and agencies such as National Science Foundation and European Research Council, and many countries. He was a member of IEEE Fellow Committee.
Dr. Liu was the prime architect and proposer of IEEE Trans. on Information Forensics and Security, IEEE Journal on Selected Topics of Signal Processing, and IEEE Trans. on Multimedia. He also initiated the creation of IEEE Trans. on Computational Imaging and IEEE Trans. on Signal and Information Processing over Networks. As Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, he enlarged the scope, restructured the Magazine into three areas including special issue, features, and column/forum, laying a solid foundation for its high impact standing in the field.
As SPS Vice President – Publications, he started the Inside Signal Processing eNewsletter for IEEE Signal Processing Society. As chair of the major revision of SPS Bylaws in 2009, he envisioned and articulated the establishment of new membership board in SPS to address membership service and create more values and benefits to attract and retain membership. As President of SPS, he created Chapter of the Year Award; developed Seasonal Schools; embarked a new online tutorials/educational program called SigView; created a “Signal Processing Cup” to engage students into competitions; championed a new initiative to provide technical repository services called SigPort; permanently established student travel fund into the operating budget.
When he was Division IX Director on IEEE Board of Directors, he took the leadership role in forming a grassroot financial transparency group, consisting of 100+ society/council presidents by spearheading IEEE financial transparency reform. The “Fintran” movement led to the adoption of the NexGen financial systems of $20M by the Board of Directors to reinvent IEEE’s financial management system.
Dr. Liu is the creator of the award-winning IEEE DataPort, which is a most popular educational/research data platform, integrated with 200+ IEEE journals, enabling educators/researchers to share their data/research with the global technical community to support open science/research. The number of users and data have since grown exponentially to be over 10M users. DataPort received the 2023 ASAE Power of Associations Summit Award, ASAE’s highest honor for the association community, conferred for its work to bring a valuable data platform to the global community and is helping achieve the mission of the IEEE by "fostering technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity”. He also proposed and co-led the development of the IEEE App that serves as “Your Global Gateway to IEEE” to discover IEEE and network globally.
As IEEE President, Dr. Liu strived to "Make IEEE Your Professional Home", a motto that defines his IEEE Presidency, deeply resonating with members resulting in record increase of 15% student membership; led the effort to raise the prestige of IEEE awards by increasing IEEE Medal of Honor prize to $2M through a relentless four-year endeavor; reformed IEEE Fellow program and approved regional repartition/alignments under his leadership for better/fair geographical representations, both were difficult issues dragging for years; started President’s weekly social media to engage members from around the world; was the first IEEE President making climate change a top priority at IEEE; created Humanitarian Technology Board to consolidate/coordinate/deliver humanitarian activities; and published a White Paper on “IEEE in 2050 and Beyond” to lay out a strategic blueprint recommending near-term/long-term prospects and action items. Dr. Liu led IEEE through the COVID pandemic to reopen.
Dr. Liu received the B.S. degree from the National Taiwan University in 1983, and the Ph.D. degree from UCLA in 1990, both in electrical engineering.
Peter H. Siegel, "IEEE President K. J. Ray Liu, "Follow Multiple Paths, "Changing the World With Microwave Time Reversal Focusing", IEEE Journal of Microwaves, July 2022.
K. J. Ray Liu, Induction to Distinguished Alumni of National Taiwan University
K. J. Ray Liu, IEEE Presidential Campaign Message, 2020
IEEE Resolution in honor of 2022 IEEE President K. J. Ray Liu
