Contact: Phil Hearn
John E. Ball
A Mississippi State electrical engineering student is the winner of a 2004 National Science Foundation graduate fellowship and will begin developing a research project this summer.
Doctoral student John E. Ball is among approximately 900 selected for the highly competitive three-year awards, which fund research and education in most fields of science and engineering. NSF Fellows receive a monthly stipend, tuition and travel expenses.
Ball said he may focus on scientific investigations related to remote sensing and image processing this summer while working with Lori Bruce, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.
"There are several areas in remote sensing and image processing that are potential topics for my dissertation, but I've not yet formulated a basic research question," he said.
Ball recently completed a mammogram analysis project with Bruce and Thomas Butler, a senior electrical engineering major from Jackson.
"We achieved 98 percent accuracy detecting malignant cases from benign ones," he said, citing plans to present their findings at a Sept. 1-5 national conference in San Francisco.
Ball also has contributed to research projects on the percentages of certain crops and weeds that show up in a remotely sensed image, and adaptive processing of fingerprint images.
Ball, a 1991 MSU electrical engineer graduate, returned to school after working for a number of years in private industry. He is the son of Dr. and Mrs. Billie J. Ball. (Billie Ball is department head emeritus of MSU's electrical engineering department and a Distinguished Engineering Fellow of the Bagley College of Engineering.)
In addition to Ball's fellowship, the NSF gave 2004 honorable mention recognitions to three other MSU students. They include:
--Graduate student Justin T. Rucker of Columbus, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Rucker, who is seeking a master's degree in electrical engineering;
--Senior Paula J. Runge of Perkinston, a mechanical engineering major and the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Runge; and
--Garth S. Campbell, also of Starkville, who is seeking a master's in biomedical engineering. [Parent information not given.]