PROFESSOR PROFILE

An Interview with EE Professor Ken Sauer

I recently sat down with Dr. Sauer from electrical engineering to find out a little bit more about one of our favorite professors. Here is what he had to say.

Dr. Sauer speeds through a derivation.

I grew up about 100 miles away from here on the other side of Fort Wayne, on a farm near Decatur.

Where did you go to school?

I went to school at several places. I started at Purdue for my undergraduate and master’s at two different campuses, and then I went to graduate school at Princeton for the last four years.

What made you want to be an engineer?

That’s a good question. For me, like many people, I think it’s in part economic motivation. At that point I needed to choose a career that would give me a job when I graduated. I was in music education for my first semester, but that didn’t look as promising as electrical engineering. Also I was a lot better at engineering than music. Since I liked the mathematical aspect of engineering the most, EE was the natural choice.

How did you end up coming to Notre Dame?

When I got out of graduate school, I was already engaged. My wife is from upstate New York and we wanted to be someplace no further south than about this latitude, so I didn’t interview at anyplace farther south than Ohio State. Of the offers I got, this was the one that most suited me in terms of the size of the department, the composition of the student body, institutional support, and the university community that I perceived at that time. I liked the fact that Notre Dame had a strong emphasis on undergraduate education. It was also clear to me that they would be very supportive of what I wanted to do in terms of research. At that time there wasn’t a lot going on here in image processing, so It was a chance for me to be part of something that was just getting started at that point. Most departments that I looked into at that time already had a number of people in image processing. That has its own benefits in joining a larger more established group, but I also liked the option of being the start of something new.

Can you talk about your research a little bit?

My research has to do with the field of image processing in which the information you get or the measurements you take are indirect. In other words, you don’t get to measure some sort of noisy picture; you get measurements that are related to that image but are in sort of another world. The best example is computer tomography, which is a lot of what I do. The measurements you take are X-ray attenuation, for example. There are other forms of tomography that give you different sorts of physical information. From those attenuation measurements you need to create a picture of the cross section of someone’s body, for example. How best to do that is not always clear. So there are a lot of interesting mathematical and statistical elements to getting that image from those indirect measurements.

How does that relate to medical fields?

A lot of what I do is medically motivated. A lot of diagnostic imaging falls into either the X-ray CT world that I just mentioned. There’s also the emission tomographic modality which extracts more functional information about what is going on. So there are two types of information we seek - one being the anatomical structure of someone’s body, the other being the function of what’s going on inside. That is, for example, what areas of the body are most actively taking up glucose, which is related to the rate of growth used for detecting tumors.

What other hobbies do you have?

Well I have two small kids so I don’t have a lot of spare time. My number one hobby is playing with my kids - whatever sport or board game they’re up to. I also like music, winter sports, and theatre, so that’s enough to fill up all my time.

How old are the kids now?

7 and 3.

Little engineers?

The older one is sure showing signs, he’s fascinated by all things mechanical and electrical. He loves to take things apart, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he heads in this direction.

What's your favorite part of the job?

The teaching and doing what I can to help the undergraduate program run smoothly. I am officially the director if undergraduate studies which means I have to oversee the process of advising, curriculum management, making sure people graduate and that they’re getting into the right programs. I like that a lot because I get to deal with people with special problems in their curricula, such as transfer students who come in with a variety of backgrounds. I like my research a lot but I’d have to say that the best part of the job is dealing with the students.

Do you have any words of advice for students?

In engineering you usually have a lot of choices in the direction you can go after graduation. When you make that choice, make sure it’s something you feel is worthwhile and not simply the route to make the most money.

Last question, What do you think our football record will be next year?

I’m looking for 8-3.