2008 Vice President, Educational Activities Evangelia (Litsa) Micheli-Tzanakou

E. (Litsa) MICHELI-TZANAKOU is Professor II and Director of the Computational Intelligence Laboratories in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers and an adjunct professor of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Till 2000, Dr Tzanakou was Chair of the Department for 10 years and established the Undergraduate curriculum in the same. She was elected a Founding Fellow of AIMBE in 1993, a Fellow of IEEE (1992) and a Fellow of the New Jersey Academy of Medicine (1986). Her latest book “Supervised and Unsupervised Pattern Recognition: Feature Extraction and Computational Intelligence” was published by CRC Press in January 2000. Dr. Tzanakou co-authored a book with S. Deutsch on "Neuroelectric Systems", published by New York University Press, in 1987. She has edited 7 books as Book editor in the Springer/Plenum Press Biomedical Engineering Series. She has published over 280 scientific papers in journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. 

Dr. Tzanakou has established the first ever, experimental Brain to Computer Interface (BCI), using her ALOPEX algorithm, in 1974. This method is now used for target optimization in Parkinson’s disease. ALOPEX has also been used in a wide variety of problems: signal processing, image processing, pattern recognition, transportation and many more.

Her research interests include Biometrics, Neural Networks, Information Processing in the brain, Image and Signal Processing applied to Biomedicine, Mammography, Telemedicine, Hearing Aids and electronic equivalents of neurons. She has graduated over 50 Masters and PhDs and currently supervises 5 graduate students.

Evangelia Micheli-Tzanakou received the BS, degree (in Physics) from the University of Athens, Greece (1969) and the MS and PhD degrees (both in Physics) from Syracuse University, Syracuse NY (1974 and1977 respectively). 

Fellowships: Elected IEEE Fellow in 1992;elected Founding Fellow, American Institute for Medical & Biological Eng. (AIMBE), in 1993; Fellow, Douglass College member of Sigma Xi and Eta Kappa Nu ; Honorary Member of the British Brain Research Association, Honorary Member of the European Brain and Behavior Society.

Awards: Meritorious Service Award, IEEE-CIS, 2006 ;NJ Women of Achievement Award, 1995;Featured in the “Notable Twentieth Century Scientists, 1994 pp. 1320-1321;Achievement Award, Society of Women Engineers, 1992; Outstanding IEEE Branch Advisor/Counselor Award, 1985; Cited as a Pioneer in the IEEE Web page (http://www.ieee.org/innovators )

Litsa has served as an associate editor and / or the editorial board of several Scientific and Engineering Journals, and as a chair or co-chair of several conferences.

Dr. Tzanakou’s other activities include the following:

Committees/Boards: INNS Board of Governors (2006-2007); IEEE Expert Now Committee Member (2007); BEWG/EAB (2006-2007); TAB Strategic Planning Committee member, 2007; IEEE Director, Division X (2005-2006); IEEE Technical Activities Board (Chair, Nominations and Appointments Committee, 2006); TAB NTDC Biometrics, Chair (2005-present); TAB NTDC BCI Chair, (2006-present); IEEE Medal of Honor Committee Chair, (2004-2006); IEEE Awards Board N&A Committee, Chair (2004-2006); President, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (2003): IEEE Awards Board Chair (2002 and 2003);IEEE Awards Board Vice Chair (2000 and 2001): IEEE( AdHoc) Committee to Review Awards, (2002) (appointed by President Findlay)