Associate Professor and inaugural Edward & Maria Keonjian Endowed Chair
Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory, University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Dr. Wolfgang Fink is the inaugural Edward & Maria Keonjian Endowed Chair with joint appointments in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Systems and Industrial Engineering, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and Ophthalmology & Vision Science at the University of Arizona. He was a Visiting Associate in Physics at the California Institute of Technology (2001–2016), a Visiting Research Associate Professor of both Ophthalmology and Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California (2005–2014), and a Senior Researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2001–2009). Dr. Fink is the founder and director of the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory both at Caltech (http://autonomy.caltech.edu) and at the University of Arizona (https://www.vaesrl.com/). Moreover, he is the founder and director of the Center for Informatics and Telehealth in Medicine (InTelMed; https://www.intelmed.arizona.edu/) at the University of Arizona. He obtained a B.S. and M.S. degree in Physics and Physical Chemistry from the University of Göttingen, Germany in 1990 and 1993, respectively, and a Ph.D. summa cum laude in Theoretical Physics from the University of Tübingen, Germany in 1997. Pursuing a trans-disciplinary systems engineering approach in “smart service systems” in general, he has focused his research and technology development efforts on autonomous systems (robotic space exploration), biomedical engineering for healthcare (especially ophthalmology and vision care), human-computer interfaces (artificial vision implants), smart platforms for mobile- and tele-health, and computer-optimized design. Dr. Fink is a NAI Fellow, ARVO Fellow, SPIE Fellow, PHMS Fellow, AIMBE Fellow, UArizona da Vinci Fellow and ACABI Fellow, Senior Member IEEE, and the current Vice President of the Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) Society. He has over 267 publications (including journal, book, and conference contributions), 6 NASA Patent Awards and 5 Techbrief Awards, as well as 31 U.S. and foreign patents awarded to date in areas, such as: autonomous systems; biomedical devices and tests with emphasis on ophthalmology and ocular healthcare; neural stimulation; signal processing; data fusion, analysis, and anomaly detection; nano-ultra-capacitors for implantable devices; MEMS fabrication; network-on-chip design; and multi-dimensional optimization. In 2021, Dr. Fink co-won the $200,000 DOE/NREL-funded E-ROBOT Prize, and in 2023 he was honored with the SPIE Aden and Marjorie Meinel Technology Achievement Award for his work in optics and imaging.
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