Profile

Biography of W. Kenneth Jenkins

W. Kenneth Jenkins received the B.S.E.E. degree from Lehigh University in 1969, and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University in 1970 and 1974, respectively. From 1974 to 1977 he was a Research Scientist Associate in the Communication Sciences Laboratory at the Lockheed Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, CA. Then in 1977 he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he became a faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1977 until 1999. From 1986-1999 Dr. Jenkins was the Director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory. Then in 1999 he joined the Pennsylvania State University where he became Professor and Head of Electrical Engineering until 2011. Then from 2011 until 2017 he returned to the rank of Professor of Electrical Engineering and became heavily involved in teaching and research. His formal retirement took place on June 30, 2017 and his current position is now Professor Emeritus in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Penn State.

Dr. Jenkins’ current research interests include fault tolerant DSP for highly scaled VLSI systems, adaptive digital signal processing, multidimensional array processing, computer imaging, bio-inspired optimization algorithms for intelligent signal processing, and fault tolerant digital signal processing. In 1986 he co-edited an IEEE Press Book entitled Residue Number System Arithmetic: Modern Applications in Digital Signal Processing. Then in 1995 he co-authored with four of his Ph.D. students the book Advanced Concepts in Adaptive Signal Processing, published by Kluwer, Inc. He is a past Associate Editor for the IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems, and a past President (1985) of the CAS Society. He served as General Chairman of the 1988 Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems and as the General Chairman of the Thirty Second Annual Asilomar Conference on Signals and Systems. From 2002 to 2007 he served on the Board of Directors of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) and as President of ECEDHA in 2005. From January 2011 through December 2013 he served as a Member of the IEEE-HKN Board of Governors.

Dr. Jenkins is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a recipient of the 1990 Distinguished Service Award of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. In 2000 he received a Golden Jubilee Medal from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and a 2000 Millennium Award from the IEEE. In 2000 was named a co-winner of the 2000 International Award of the George Montefiore Foundation (Belgium) for outstanding career contributions to the field of electrical engineering and electrical science, in 2002 he was awarded the Shaler Area High School Distinguished Alumnus Award, in 2007 he was honored with an IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems 50th Anniversary Award, and in 2013 he received the ECEDHA Robert M. Janowiak Outstanding Leadership and Service Award.