Clarkson University professor emeritus of mathematics Abdul J. Jerri will speak at a special session on "Inverse Problems and Multivariate Signal Analysis" at the American Mathematical Society annual meeting in Atlanta, Ga. in January.

The title of his lecture is "Multivariate Sampling in Signal Processing."

His invited presentation is dedicated to the centennial (1916-2016) of the great American scientist and "Father of Information Theory" Claude Elwood Shannon, according to a press release from Clarkson.

Jerri's 1977 paper “The Shannon Sampling Theorem - Its Various Extensions and Applications - A Tutorial Review” has nearly 2,000 citations, the release said.

“To send a voice on the phone, we chop it into pieces, or samples, that can be transmitted. Then the receiver will get these samples. There's a mathematical formula that will connect the pieces and make the voice understandable. Claude Shannon used this idea of having voice samples that we connect to create a continuous flow,” Jerri said.

Shannon also had talents not known to many, Jerri said. “He was a good juggler. He could juggle four balls while riding a unicycle. He made a machine that juggles, too.”

While signal analysis for voice deals with one dimension, more complex information can be transmitted.

For example, to send an image of a face, “we're talking about two dimensions, vertical and horizontal. We take samples and send them and have a formula that will connect the points and show your mom your beautiful face. If we add a third dimension, we can see your nose. Something like a photo of the brain, e.g., medical imaging, adds a fourth dimension for movement in time,” Jerri said.

Jerri has written seven mathematics texts and research references, but wants to leave his profession something while he's retired, so he's making tutorials on signal analysis for multi-dimensions, he said.

Jerri received a bachelor of science degree in physics from the University of Baghdad, and a master's degree in physics from the Illinois University of Technology in Chicago.

He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Oregon State University.

He joined the faculty of Clarkson University's department of mathematics and computer science in 1967, retiring in 2002, the release said.

Jerri's career included visiting positions at the American University in Cairo, where he established study programs in mathematics and computer science from 1972 to 1974.

He was also the director of the graduate mathematics study program at Kuwait University from 1978 to 1980, according to Clarkson.

Jerri is a double-awarded Fulbright Scholar. He taught at the Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman, in 1997 and at the Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan in 2001.

He is the founding executive editor of Sampling Theory In Signal and Image Processing (STSIP), An International Journal.

In 1995, Jerri was one of the few researchers who helped establish SAMPTA (Sampling Theory and Applications) Workshops, which meet in a different country every two years.