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Julie Dickerson, P3 Program Director, named Northrop Grumman Professor

Two Iowa State University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECpE) faculty were recognized on Sept. 7 at the College of Engineering Convocation. Professors Ratnesh Kumar and Julie Dickerson were named Harpole Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Northrop Grumman Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, respectively. 

Dickerson is the program director of the Iowa State's NSF Research Traineeship (NSRT), Predictive Plant Phenomics Program. .

ECpE Palmer Department Chair Ashfaq Khokhar said these professorships are a true recognition of both Kumar and Dickerson’s outstanding academic accomplishments.

The two professors were recommended by a committee of their peers in the department. Based on the committee recommendations, Khokhar nominated them for these awards, which were later approved by the Dean of the College of Engineering and the Iowa State University Provost.

Dickerson’s core research area is bioinformatics, specifically in communications and signal processing. Her main area of focus is applying machine learning methods to understanding gene function and the effects on metabolism. Dickerson has over 100 peer-reviewed publications in journals. She has received the Honor Award for Excellence from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for her work with the barley genome and with plant genome informatics databases. As a program officer at the National Science Foundation, she was the lone engineer in the Biological Sciences Directorate supporting the Advances in Biological Informatics Program. Her research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  

“I am honored and surprised to receive the Northrop Grumman Professorship, and I would like to thank my colleagues for their support,” Dickerson said.