Bio: Professor Cosman is addressing a critical challenge for high-speed Internet and mobile data transmission: how to send images at the highest speed, in the face of 'noise' (interference) and limited bandwidth. As demand for streaming video and other multimedia grows, she says the goal is to design algorithms that allow for the most compression while still maintaining acceptable video quality. With funding from corporations and the University of California, Cosman is also part of a group studying enhanced coverage of high data rate wireless systems. Cosman can also speak in lay terms about recent advances in 'progressive' compression used for downloading image files over the Web; for downloading to a printer (without requiring a lot of on-board memory); and for sending a fax. She is also involved in computer vision projects in the biological sciences, including ways to analyze video to measure fish eggs, and to track and classify microscopic mutant worms. Cosman is particularly interested in engineering education, having participated on numerous advisory and steering committees to enhance educational excellence and boost the diversity of the Jacobs School's enrollment. Pamela Cosman is the co-director of the Center for Wireless Communications.

Research: Pamela Cosman joined UCSD in July 1995. Previously, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, and a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer with the Information Systems Laboratory at Stanford University. Pamela received her Ph.D. from Stanford in 1993 and her B.S.E.E. from the California Institute of Technology in 1987. At UCSD she is co-director of the Information Coding Laboratory. She received an NSF CAREER Award from 1996 to 1999, and a Powell Faculty Fellowship 1998 to 1999. She was the ECE representative on the Jacobs School's ABET 2000 steering committee. She is the author of over 70 papers and book chapters in the areas of image/video compression, image quality evaluation,and biomedical image processing.