Dougherty publishes new book on the use of optimal operators

Sir Isaac Newton first stated “An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.” Dr. Edward R. Dougherty has written a book expanding upon Newton’s fundamental theory to interrupt negative behaviors in biological systems.

Dougherty is the Robert M. Kennedy ’26 Chair Professor and a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. His recently published book titled “Optimal Signal Processing Under Uncertainty,” encompasses a unified way of finding a solution to a problem without having a full understanding of the system.

While finding a solution can usually be done using well-established methods when you understand every part of the system, many times you only know part of the system. These problems have been around for a long time in a variety of areas, but not until recently has finding a solution to certain problems become more difficult. This is in part because until recently, many technological systems, such as computers, were not that complex. Someone designed the system and therefore it was understood.

“The more complex a machine gets the more mistakes it can make,” Dougherty said.

With the advancement of technology, computers are now built by different teams of people and it is becoming increasingly difficult to verify that what the system is doing is correct. Additionally, because we did not design biological systems, such as a group of cells, finding a solution to a problem within this is even more of a challenge.

In his book, Dougherty explains that the best way to alter a system’s behavior when you do not have full knowledge of the system is by finding an operator, or intervention, that is optimal relative to both the engineering objective and system uncertainty – the best drug or best image filter. 

“In signal processing, you could have an image and the image has been distorted by transmission and you want to capture it but there’s noise in it,” Dougherty said. “You want to suppress that noise to restore the original image. What do I mean by getting the best restored image? There’s an error between what I actually receive and what I should be getting. I want to minimize that error.”

Dougherty is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow. Since 1987 he has published 19 books. While this book has applications in a variety of fields, his primary research interest is in genomic signal processing, which is the analysis and use of genomic signals to gain biological knowledge that can be used to diagnose and treat genetic diseases.