Faculty

Paul H. Siegel

Distinguished Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Endowed Chair, Center for Memory and Recording Research

Phone:   (858) 534-6210
Fax:         (858) 534-8059
Email:     psiegel@ucsd.edu
Office:   CMRR Room 305
Mailing Address:
Center for Memory and Recording Research
9500 Gilman Drive, Mail Code 0401
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0401

Research Interests
  • Mathematical foundations of signal processing and coding
  • Analysis and design of codes for constrained channels
  • Trellis-coded modulation techniques
  • Algebraic error-correction coding
  • Algorithms and architectures for signal processing.
  • Applications to digital data storage and wireless communications
Education

S.B. Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1975

Ph.D. Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1979

Biography

Paul H. Siegel was born in Berkeley, California in 1953. He received the B.S. degree in mathematics in 1975 and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics in 1979, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He held a Chaim Weizmann fellowship during a year of postdoctoral study at the Courant Institute, New York University.

He joined the research staff at IBM in 1980. From 1984 through 1993, he was manager of the Signal Processing and Coding project at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, and in 1994, he was named manager of the Mathematics and Related Computer Science department at Almaden. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) while at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research during the 1989-90 academic year. He joined the faculty at UCSD in July 1995, and he is currently Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering. He is affiliated with the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), the Center for Wireless Communications (CWC), and the Center for Memory and Recording Research (CMRR), where he holds an endowed chair and served as Director from 2000 to 2011.

His primary research interest is the mathematical foundations of signal processing and coding, especially as applicable to digital data storage and communications. He holds several patents in the area of coding and detection for digital recording systems, and was named a Master Inventor at IBM Research in 1994.

Prof. Siegel was co-recipient, with R. Karabed, of the 1992 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award for the paper ''Matched Spectral Null Codes for Partial Response Channels,'' and he shared the 1993 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award with B. Marcus and J. K. Wolf for the paper ''Finite-State Modulation Codes for Data Storage.'' Along with his doctoral students J. B. Soriaga and H. D. Pfister, he received the 2007 IEEE Communications Society, Data Storage Technical Committee Best Paper Award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage for the paper ''Determining and Approaching Achievable Rates of Binary Intersymbol Interference Channels using Multistage Decoding.''

Prof. Siegel delivered the IEEE Information Theory Society Padovani Lecture at the 2015 North American School of Information Theory.

Prof. Siegel was a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society from 1991-1996, 2009 - 2014. He served as co-Guest Editor of the May 1991 Special Issue on Coding for Storage Devices of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Associate Editor for Coding Techniques from 1992 to 1995, and Editor-in-Chief from 2001 to 2004. He was also co-Guest Editor of the May/September 2001 double-issue on The Turbo Principle: From Theory to Practice and the February 2016 issue on Recent Advances in Capacity Approaching Codes of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

He is co-organizer (with Steve Swanson and Eitan Yaakobi) of the Annual Non-Volatile Memories Workshop (NVMW) at UCSD.

Prof. Siegel is a Fellow of the IEEE. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008, "for the invention and development of advanced coding techniques for digital recording systems."

Honors and Distinctions

Research

  • 2015 Padovani Lecturer, IEEE Information Theory Society.
  • Member, National Academy of Engineering, February 2008.
    (Citation: "For the invention and development of advanced coding techniques for digital recording systems.")
  • 2007 IEEE Communications Society, Data Storage Technical Committee
    Best Paper Award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage, October 2008 (with J.B. Soriaga and H.D. Pfister)
  • IEEE Fellow, 1997.
    (Citation: "For contributions to signal processing and coding for storage systems.")
  • Master Inventor, IBM Research, 1994
  • 1993 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award (with B. Marcus and J. K. Wolf)
  • 1992 IEEE Information Theory Society Best Paper Award (with R. Karabed)

Teaching

  • Best Graduate Teacher Award, ECE Department, 2009 – 2010 and 2015-2016.
  • Best Undergraduate Teacher Award, ECE Department, 2017-2018.
  • Teacher of the Year Award, Triton Engineering Student Council, Jacobs School of Engineering, 2007-2008.
  • Outstanding Mentor Award in STEM, UCSD Office of Undergraduate Research, 2020-2021.

Service

  • Member, Board of Governors, IEEE Information Theory Society, 1991 - 1996, 2009 – 2014.
  • Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, July 2001 – June 2004.
  • Co-Guest Editor, Special Issue on Recent Advances in Capacity-Approaching Codes, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, February 2016.
  • Guest Editor-in-Chief, Special Issue on The Turbo Principle: From Theory to Practice, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, May/September 2001.
  • Associate Editor for Coding Techniques, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 1992 – 1995.
  • Co-Guest Editor, Special Issue on Coding for Storage Devices, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, May 1991.