Now Professors in Brazil, 2 ECE Grads Continue Work With Prof. Jordan

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The long-lasting collaboration between ECE and one of Brazil's largest private universities, the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), continues to bring new and fruitful outcomes.

Two former ECE graduate students, Fabricio Ourique and Vinicius Licks, have recently joined the PUCRS faculty at its Electrical Engineering and Mechatronics Engineering departments, respectively.

Both earned their PhDs working under the supervision of Dr. Ramiro Jordan. Their dissertations focused on different aspects of the digital image watermarking problem, an emerging technology that is closely related to the initiative to develop mechanisms to enforce copyright of digital video.

Currently, both professors Licks and Ourique are engaged in a joint research project with Dr. Jordan on the subject of statistical signal processing applied to sensor networks and image processing for biomedical applications.

Dr. Ourique is excited with the idea of continuing to work with his collaborators at ECE. "We have now the opportunity to join the best of both institutions to leverage our research. I am pretty confident we can achieve higher standards in this way."

Dr. Licks, who has also been appointed as the new Director of the Undergraduate Program in Control Engineering, comments on his early career development. "My challenge now is to turn what I've learned at ECE into a valuable contribution to our undergraduate program while keeping up doing high-level research, which is by no means an easy task!"

The link between PUCRS and ECE was established during the '80s when PUCRS's current Provost, Paulo Girardello Franco, was a graduate student at ECE. Concerned about the future prospects for science and technology education in Latin America, Dr. Franco joined the group of individuals that created the Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC). Dr. Franco earned his MS and PhD degrees at UNM.

Professors Licks and Ourique also want to establish a graduate-level dual degree program with ECE that would encourage further mobility and collaboration among faculty and students from both institutions.

For information, please contact:

Vinicius Licks at licks@istec.org
Fabricio Ourique at fourique@istec.org