2022 IEEE President KJ Ray Liu Honored for Leadership

Unlike many aspiring engineers, KJ Ray Liu was not inspired to enter the field by tinkering with electronics or following in the footsteps of a family member. Growing up in Taichung, Taiwan, he answered his government’s call for students to become electrical engineers to help make semiconductors in the 1970s, when the country’s economy was struggling.

“Students who studied mathematics, science and physics all wanted to become electrical engineers because that was the priority of the government,” said Liu. That’s how I got into engineering. Taiwan is now the world leader in semiconductors.”

But when he graduated from university in 1983, semiconductor factories were still under construction, so there were no jobs available.

Instead, he went on to a successful career as a teacher and businessman in the United States.

For 31 years, he was a professor of information technology and digital signal processing researcher at the University of Maryland in College Park until his retirement in 2021.

Liu was chairman, CEO, and CTO of Origin Wireless, a startup he founded in Rockville, Md. Origin, which was acquired by ADT in February, pioneered the innovation of wireless hearing and home tracking.

Liu, an IEEE Fellow, is an active IEEE volunteer who served as the organization’s president in 2022.

The IEEE honored him with this year’s Haraden Pratt Award for “transformative and impactful leadership.”

Liu is credited with increasing the diversity of candidates for the IEEE’s Fellow program, which is the highest level of membership. He also led the effort to geographically adjust the organization’s regions to ensure equal global representation on the IEEE Board of Directors.

He received Pratt’s honor on April 24 during a ceremony in New York City. The IEEE Foundation sponsored a Board-level award.

“Above all, I respect the volunteers and staff I had the privilege of working with,” he said. “Our hard work is fueled by our shared commitment to this professional home that we love and care for.”

In the 1970s, Taiwanese policy makers decided to improve the country’s economy by moving from manufacturing products such as shoes and umbrellas to manufacturing electronics.

The industry began in 1976 when RCA, a major electronics company at the time, agreed to transfer licensed semiconductor processes to the Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan. ITRI ​​founded several semiconductor-related companies including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. TSMC, launched in 1987, is the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor company.

Liu graduated in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei. At the time, there were no semiconductor companies, he says.

“These days, most of the students who have graduated from university in this country go directly to TSMC to get a job,” he said. But at that time, there really wasn’t a job market.

“Most of my classmates—including me—came to the United States for graduate school. Many of us stayed and, over the past thirty to four years, contributed to the development of computer communication technology in the US”

Liu left Taiwan after two years of conscription in the Republic of China Armed Forces to study at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he received a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1987.

“If I can help make IEEE a better professional home for future members, that’s something I can give back to IEEE.”

He went on to earn a Ph.D. in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering in 1990 from the University of California, Los Angeles. His interest in digital signal processing and very large scale integration (VLSI) was sparked while at UCLA. Today VLSI powers all modern electronics.

“When I was a graduate student, there was no wireless connection. Everyone had a landline,” he explains.

VLSI was an important, active research field at the time.

“My research interest was in digital signal processing,” he says. “One day I saw a book on VLSI signals on my professor’s shelf.

“VLSI is one channel, digital signal processing is another, and there is a bridge that connects the two. I was interested in both areas, so I did my Ph.D. thesis on VLSI signal processing.”

After graduating, Liu joined the University of Maryland, where he is said to have founded its signal processing research program.

In addition to teaching, he conducts research on a wide range of signal processing and communication aspects. Topics include bioinformatics, game theory, signal processing algorithms and architecture, and wireless sensing and communication.

He has written more than 10 books and 900 papers, and holds 250 patents. You can find his research papers in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

An ambient trailblazer

Liu is considered a pioneer in the field of ambient sensors. The technology collects environmental data and is used in security systems and health monitoring devices.

He came up with the idea, he says, while working on a project in 2009 for the US Navy. He was trying to solve a problem the Navy was having with the wireless communication systems used on its submarines. Because submarines are made of steel, radio waves can’t penetrate parts of the ships and instead bounce around, causing interference, he says.

His solution was to use a concept unknown to physics: reverse time signal processing. The technique captures waves, such as sound and electromagnetic signals, sends them back in the same direction in reverse, flips the signal from last to first output, and outputs them again.

“By using a time-reversal feed, we can increase the signal-to-noise ratio four times,” he says. “That improved the efficiency a lot.”

He says he became fascinated with the physics of time-varying signal processing, and wondered how he could use the concept to serve the public. After three years of research, he came up with the idea of ​​using wireless hearing systems with radio waves from surrounding Wi-Fi networks.

“I learned to turn Wi-Fi networks into sensor networks that define our activities,” he says. “We knew everything that was happening around us—our movement, breathing, heart rate, even fall detection—except for wearables.”

Through the university’s incubator, which encourages faculty to work on projects with a social impact, he launched Origin in 2013. The company’s Wi-FI and AI sensor technology enables accurate indoor tracking, motion detection, and health monitoring without the need for wearable devices or cameras. Its products, including its remote patient monitoring, received three innovation awards at the 2020 and 2021 Consumer Electronics Shows, including best innovation.

Finding his professional home

Liu joined the IEEE in 1986 as a graduate student to access its research papers, he says.

“If you haven’t joined the IEEE community, you haven’t received its journal—which means you won’t be able to read the latest research papers,” he says. “So, I joined the IEEE Signal Processing Society. When I attended my first signal processing conference, I knew I had found a professional home. I met many like-minded people, and together, we are building a professional home for our members worldwide.”

He became an active volunteer, holding senior leadership positions including 2012-2013 president of the Signal Processing Society and 2016-2017 director of IEEE Division IX, which includes societies focused on signal processing, data transmission, navigation, and transportation. In 2019 he was the vice president of the Technical Activities Board.

In 2022 he served as IEEE president and CEO. The three accomplishments of his tenure that he says he is most proud of are increasing the funding for the IEEE Medal of Honor award, overseeing the reorganization of IEEE regions, and establishing financial transparency.

The reason for increasing the IEEE’s grand prize award—from US $50,000 to $2 million—in 2025, he says, was to emphasize the value of the technology the IEEE community develops. Those innovations include semiconductors, the Internet, and the GPU. The prize money of the Medal of Honor now exceeds that of the Nobel Prize, which carries an award of approximately $1 million.

“We need the rest of the world to understand that the IEEE community has had a tremendous impact on society over the past century,” Liu said. “Even so, we didn’t get the attention and respect we deserved, so we had to help ourselves, we want the whole world to know what our contributions are.”

His next achievement was to reorient the IEEE circuits. In the past few years, membership in Region 10, which includes countries in Asia and the Pacific, has grown from 10 percent of the total membership to about 40 percent, he says. It is the largest and most populous of the IEEE regions, but its members are not equally represented on the Board of Directors. Each district had one representative on the Board.

“The district has 40 percent of the members but only 10 percent of the Board,” said Liu. “That didn’t make sense to most of us.”

The IEEE board in 2022 approved the reorganization of the region. The total number of states remains at 10, but their organization changes. As of January 1, 2028, the six US-based states will be consolidated into five, and the 10th state will be split in two. IEEE will no longer use the name Region 1. The new Region 2 will represent the Northeastern and Eastern US Region 10 will cover North Asia, and the new Region 11 will represent South Asia and the Pacific.

Liu was also successful in leading an organization that persuaded the IEEE Board to invest in a better financial reporting system to have a clearer understanding of the organization’s finances. The modern system now tracks bank transactions, contracts, expense reports, and other spending.

He says: “Now we know exactly where the money comes from and where it is spent, so that we can make informed decisions.

“If I can help make IEEE a better professional home for future members, that’s something I can give back to IEEE,” he adds. “I really appreciate what IEEE has given me. From a student to a professor to a prominent leader, in all stages, it has given me different opportunities to grow. That’s why I worked hard during my presidency to make sure that everyone sees that it is the professional home of all our work.”