Reflections on Lisa Zurk as an Educator

Abstract

Lisa Zurk was my advisor and mentor through both my masters and doctoral degree programs. I had the pleasure of working with her beginning in 2008; first as her graduate student, then in my subsequent professional career while she was a program manager in the Strategic Technology Office at DARPA. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been part of the Northwest Electromagnetics and Acoustics Research Laboratory (NEAR-Lab), which she founded at Portland State University in 2005. Under her guidance and leadership, the group became a diverse community of tight-knit students, faculty, and other researchers; united in our passion for research in terahertz imaging and spectroscopy, underwater acoustics, and physics-based signal processing. My experience there, and that of my fellow students, paved the way for our future careers in science and engineering in industry, academia, and everywhere in between. Today, NEAR-Lab alumni can be found at top tech companies such as Apple, Boeing, Intel, Tektronix, and Metron; nationally-renowned research organizations like The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; and even internationally at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and JASCO Applied Sciences. The success of her students speaks volumes about her impact on the generation of innovators that followed her. This talk will reflect on Dr. Zurk as an educator and will present some of the work she coauthored and published with her students.