Leah Jamieson

Leah Jamieson: Biography

Born:

Leah Jamieson served as IEEE president in 2007. Jamieson was the second woman to do so; Martha Sloan held the office in 1993. She previously served as the vice president of IEEE Publication Services and Products and was chair of the IEEE Technical Activities Board Periodicals Committee, as well as vice president of Technical Activities in 2003.

Jamieson received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, and master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University, in New Jersey. She is the Ransburg Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and associate dean of engineering for undergraduate education at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Ind., where she has been a faculty member since 1976.

At Purdue, Jamieson co-founded and is a director of the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) undergraduate engineering design program, which was initiated at Purdue and adopted by 17 universities. EPICS matches teams of engineering students with local community service programs to define, design, build, test, and support projects that improve the community. One example is Purdue’s partnership with the Wabash Center Children’s Clinic, in Lafayette, which works with the physically disabled. Purdue students helped deliver custom playgroup software, including interactive programs to teach the signlanguage alphabet. For her work with EPICS, she was the co-recipient of the 2005 Bernard M. Gordon Prize given by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering to recognize innovation in engineering technology education.