Own Your Passion. Riveting talks by remarkable people, in London on March 12, 2011
EdJernigan
Just zip up your life jacket and keep paddling.
by Ed Jernigan
Ed shares lessons learned over 40 years of helping young people find and follow their passions. Often our life's passion emerges over a lifetime of doing what we feel good about doing and is clear only in retrospect. Getting there is like a river trip--we begin by following our guides as we explore what interests us--in Ed's case it includes working across disciplines, working with small groups of like minded people dedicated to a common purpose, and teaching. Eventually, we become guides in turn, advising those who follow to zip up their life jackets and keep on paddling.

Ed joined Waterloo in 1976 after completing his Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and Ph.D., from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The former chair of the Department of Systems Design Engineering, Dr. Jernigan is a dedicated teacher who has been recognized with both the University of Waterloo’s Distinguished Teacher Award and the Teaching Excellence Award by the Faculty of Engineering.

Dr. Jernigan has been interested in biomedical applications in Systems Design Engineering throughout his career, primarily in the application of vision and image processing systems to medical image analysis, interpretation and diagnosis. He has also been involved with projects in eye movement analysis for vision diagnostics, image enhancement for low vision patients, artificial vision systems and vision models. His recent projects include wavelet based medical image enhancement and compression, and the development of a content based image archiving and retrieval system for medical image data bases. He collaborates with researchers in optometry and with industry. He founded the Vision and Image Processing research group in the Department of Systems Design Engineering in 1980.

Since 1984 Ed has served as the Program Director for the Shad Valley summer enrichment program, living in residence with 48 high school students during the month of July. In 2004 he created Waterloo Unlimited, a university-wide enrichment program for high school students of exceptional potential, which he continues to direct.