Fellows at MERL

Recognizing impactful contributions to the field.

A number of major technical societies recognize their most accomplished members by giving them the title Fellow. Achieving Fellow status is a highly competitive process given to only a small percentage of members based on their body of work. The large number of technical society Fellows that have achieved that status based on their work at MERL is a testament to the high quality of MERL's work.

MERL also recognizes a select few staff members as MERL Fellows. This selection is based on the technical significance of their body of work and the importance of that work to Mitsubishi Electric.

  • Technical Society and MERL Fellows currently working at MERL

  • Petros Boufounos Picture


    Petros Boufounos Ph.D.
    IEEE Fellow (2022)
    For contributions to compressed sensing.
    Petros has made fundamental contributions in the field of compressive sensing, particularly in the areas of quantized and 1-bit compressed sensing and compressive-domain signal processing. His contributions have enabled significant advances in a variety of applications, including radar and array processing, synthetic aperture radar, information embeddings, and distributed compression.

    At MERL: Since 2009
    Currently: Distinguished Research Scientist, Senior Team Leader, Deputy Director

  • Matt Brand Picture


    Matt Brand Ph.D.
    MERL Fellow
    For contributions to convex optimization, Bayesian machine learning, computational linear algebra, path planning, and freeform and metasurface optics, resulting in methods that have enjoyed decades of continuous use in diverse application areas including bio-informatics, data mining, neural networks, and e-commerce.

    At MERL: Since 1997
    Currently: MERL Fellow

  • Stefano Di Cairano Picture


    Stefano Di Cairano Ph.D.
    IEEE Fellow (2025)
    For contributions to model predictive and constrained control in automotive and aerospace applications.
    Stefano has made fundamental contributions to the fields of model predictive control and constrained control, for guaranteeing robustness, performance, and reduced computational burden. The contributions enable their effective usage in several applications domains, especially in automotive, automated driving, and spacecraft control.

    At MERL: Since 2011
    Currently: Distinguished Research Scientist, Senior Team Leader, Deputy Director

  • Toshiaki Koike-Akino Picture


    Toshiaki Koike-Akino Ph.D.
    Optica (formerly Optical Society of America) Fellow (2022)
    For contributions to signal processing for optical communications.
    Toshiaki has made fundamental contributions to the field of nonlinear equalizations, high-dimensional modulations, constellation shaping, and forward error correction codes. He is also recognized for his key contributions to photonic circuit design, applied artificial intelligence and quantum technologies to the photonic research community.

    At MERL: Since 2010
    Currently: Distinguished Research Scientist

  • Jonathan Le Roux Picture


    Jonathan Le Roux Ph.D.
    IEEE Fellow (2024)
    For contributions to multi-source speech and audio processing.
    Jonathan has made fundamental contributions to the field of multi-speaker speech processing, particularly in the areas of speech separation and multi-speaker end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR). His contributions constituted a major advance in realizing a practically usable solution to the cocktail party problem. He is also recognized for his key contributions to the measures used for training and evaluating audio source separation methods

    At MERL: Since 2011
    Currently: Distinguished Research Scientist, Senior Team Leader

  • Anthony Vetro Picture


    Anthony Vetro Ph.D.
    IEEE Fellow (2011)
    For contributions to video coding, three-dimensional television, and multimedia adaptation.
    Anthony has made notable technical contributions to, and led the development of, 3D video compression standards, which have been used to enable immersive media experiences. He is also well recognized for his work on video transcoding and multimedia adaptation, which are now pervasive and widely used in content and streaming platforms.

    At MERL: Since 1996
    Currently: President, Chief Executive Officer

  • Fellows no longer at MERL, who became Fellows based on MERL work

  • Richard C. Waters Picture


    Richard C. Waters Ph.D.
    MERL Fellow
    For the design of Spline, the world’s first multi-user interactive virtual environment platform featuring: (1) real-time spoken interaction, (2) a completely decentralized architecture, and (3) modification/ extension of the virtual world during non-stop operation; and for the management of the project creating the Diamond Park demonstration system based on Spline shown at COMDEX in 1995.

    At MERL: 1991-2024
    Currently: MERL Fellow Emeritus

  • Jinyun Zhang Picture


    Jinyun Zhang Ph.D.
    IEEE Fellow (2008) & MERL Fellow
    For contributions to broadband wireless transmission and networking technology.
    Jinyun made contributions to a variety of wireless and optical communication methods and standards, many of which are in popular use today. These include Ultra-Wideband (UWB), providing both communication and location capability; ZigBee ad hoc for IoT and sensor network applications; and Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) transmission methods for Wifi systems.

    At MERL: 2001-2024
    Currently: MERL Fellow Emerita