Benoit Dawant, Vanderbilt University professor of electrical engineering and computer engineering, has been named an IEEE Fellow by the Board of Directors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers at its November meeting.
The IEEE Board conferred the honor – effective Jan. 1, 2010 – on Dawant for his contributions to biomedical image analysis and image guided medical interventions.
Dawant works at the interface between engineering and medicine. He develops techniques that permit the automatic analysis of medical images and their use for surgical guidance.
He is currently working with colleagues on systems that assist in the placement of deep brain stimulator (DBS) used to treat Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, in the placement cochlear implants, in the resection of tumors, in liver surgery, or in the localization of radio-sensitive structures for radiation therapy.
Dawant received his M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium; and a Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering in 1987 from the University of Houston.
He joined Vanderbilt in 1988 as an assistant professor in the department of electrical engineering. He was promoted to associate professor in 1994, and to professor in 2002. He currently holds appointments in the departments of electrical engineering and computer science, biomedical engineering, and radiology and radiological sciences.
Dawant is the author or the co-author of more than 70 scientific journal papers, which have been cited more than 2,000 times. He has also been the recipient of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging award for the most frequently cited paper published in 1993.