Prof. Richard Baraniuk

Director and Founder of OpenStax CNX


United States of America

Richard Baraniuk is the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University and the Founder and Director of OpenStax CNX (cnx.org).  Launched in 1999, OpenStax CNX was one of the world’s first – and today is one of the world’s largest – “open education” projects, inviting universal participation in the creation of, and free access to, knowledge.  Each month, OpenStax CNX provides free and remixable educational materials and e-textbooks to a community of over two million users from 200 countries. 

For his research projects in sensors, signal processing, and “big data” Professor Baraniuk has received national research awards from the US NSF and ONR, the Rosenbaum Fellowship from the Isaac Newton Institute of Cambridge University, the ECE Young Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Illinois, the SPIE Wavelet Pioneer Award, the SPIE Compressive Sampling Pioneer Award, an MIT Technology Review TR10 Top 10 Emerging Technology Award, and several best paper awards.  He is co-inventor of the “single-pixel camera” that has been widely reported in the popular press and is being commercialized by InVIEW Technologies.

For his education projects, Professor Baraniuk has received the Eta Kappa Nu C. Holmes MacDonald National Outstanding Teaching Award, the Tech Museum Laureate Award, the Internet Pioneer Award from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the World Technology Network Education Award, and the IEEE Signal Processing Society Education Award.  He has been selected as one of Edutopia Magazine's Daring Dozen Education Innovators, spoken at the TED conference, and elected a Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of AAAS.