Geoffrey S. M. Hedrick Senior Professor of Engineering, Cornell University

Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Cornell University

Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University

House Fellow, William Keeton House, Cornell University

Adjunct Research Fellow, Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam)

 

390 Rhodes Hall
Phone: (607) 255-0429
E-mail: johnson at ece.cornell.edu 

 

B.E.E. with high honors, 1973 (Georgia Institute of Technology); M.S.E.E. 1975 (Stanford University); Ph.D. E.E. with minors in Engineering-Economic Systems and Art History, 1977 (Stanford University)

C. Richard Johnson, Jr. was born in Macon, GA in 1950. He received a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, along with the first PhD minor in Art History granted by Stanford, in 1977. After 4 years on the faculty at Virginia Tech, he joined the Cornell University faculty in 1981, where he is the Geoffrey S. M. Hedrick Senior Professor of Engineering and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow.

At the start of 2007, Professor Johnson accepted a 5-year appointment as an Adjunct Research Fellow of the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) to facilitate the interaction of art historians and conservation specialists with algorithm-building signal processors. In May 2007, Professor Johnson served as general chairman of the First International Workshop on Image Processing for Artist Identification -- which he conceived and organized -- held at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. He was interviewed on NPR for the show Science Friday on May 18, 2007, about this workshop. NOVA Science Now filmed a segment during the workshop about computer-based image analysis in assistance of art authentication that was broadcast July 2, 2008. The publication in July 2008 of a technical paper describing the efforts from the workshop resulted in an article on emerging assistance from image processing in painting authentication in the Philadelphia Inquirer in July 2008, and an Associated Press story released worldwide in August 2008. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City hosted a revised repeat (Version 1.5) of the workshop on November 9, 2007. The Second International Workshop on Image Processing for Artist Identification was held in October 2008.

Professor Johnson's activity in this cross-disciplinary scholarship was reported in the spring 2008 issue of the Cornell Engineering Magazine, the March 29, 2008 issue of The Sunny mail (which is the in-house newsletter of the Van Gogh Museum), the September 5, 2008 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the November 2008 issue of the ASEE Prism, the May 2009 issue of the SIAM News, and the July 2009 issue of the IEEE Spectrum.

Research Interests:

Professor Johnson's principal research interests have been

(i) (1977-1991) adaptive feedback systems theory useful in applications of digital signal processing, digital control, and system identification,

(ii) (1991-2005) blind equalization algorithm analysis and creation for digital communication receivers, and

(iii) (2005-present) signal processing algorithms in support of painting analysis, presently a canvas thread count automation project that is producing tools capable of substantially expanding the utility of this commonly sought forensic data. [This work has been supported in part by gifts to Cornell University by Geoffrey S. M. Hedrick, Stephen H. Weiss, and David and Miriam Donoho.]

Recent Publications:

A. G. Klein, D. H. Johnson, W. A. Sethares, H. Lee, C. R. Johnson, Jr., and E. Hendriks, "Algorithms for Old Master Painting Canvas Thread Counting from X-rays," Proc. 42nd Asilomar Conf. on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, October 2008.

D. H. Johnson, C. R. Johnson, Jr., A. G. Klein, W. A. Sethares, H. Lee, and E. Hendriks, "A Thread Counting Algorithm for Art Forensics," Proc. 13th IEEE DSP Workshop, Marco Island, FL, Janaury 2009.

C. R. Johnson, Jr., E. Hendriks, P. Noble, and M. Franken, "Advances in Computer-Assisted Canvas Examination: Thread counting algorithms," 37th Annual Meeting of American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Los Angeles, CA, May 2009.


(CV including a list of selected publications)


Current Courses:

Fall 2009: ECE 4210 (Signal Processing in Support of Painting Analysis)

Spring 2010: ECE 2200 (Signals and Information)

Fall 2010: ECE 4210 (Signal Processing in Support of Painting Analysis) and ECE 5950 (Applications of Adaptive Signal Processing)