Jaakko T. Astola

Timeline

1. 1949–1978

   Mathematics degrees at Turku

   Born in Helsinki in 1949, he earns a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Turku in 1973, a licentiate in 1975 and a PhD in 1978, specializing in error-correcting codes. From April 1976 to March 1977, he studies and researches at the Department of Computer Science of the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Kyoto University.

2. 1979–1993

   Lappeenranta and applied mathematics

   He lectures at Lappeenranta University of Technology from 1979 to 1987 and spends late 1984 in the Discrete Mathematics Group headed by J.H. van Lint at Eindhoven University of Technology. From 1988 to 1993, he is associate professor of applied mathematics at the University of Tampere.

3. 1993

   Professor of signal processing at TUT

   In October 1993, he becomes Professor of Signal Processing at Tampere University of Technology. There he directs the Tampere International Center for Signal Processing (TICSP) and edits its Reprints from the Early Days of Information Technologies series with Radomir S. Stanković.

4. 1997

   Fundamentals of Nonlinear Digital Filtering

   In 1997, he and Pauli Kuosmanen publish Fundamentals of Nonlinear Digital Filtering, a reference handbook and textbook on nonlinear filtering. Its chapters cover weighted median, stack, morphological and polynomial filters and their statistical optimization.

5. 2000–2002

   IEEE Fellow and Eusipco 2000

   The IEEE names him a Fellow in 2000 for contributions to the theory and applications of nonlinear signal processing, and he is general chair of the Eusipco 2000 European Signal Processing Conference in Tampere in September 2000. In December 2000, the President of Finland makes him Knight, First Class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland; he joins the Finnish Academy of Technology in 2001 and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2002.

6. 2001–2007

   Academy Professor and genomics

   From August 2001 to July 2006, he serves as Academy Professor of the Academy of Finland. In April 2002, he is Edward Rotan Visiting Professor at the Cancer Genomics Core Laboratory of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and he is general chair of the IEEE International Workshop on Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics in 2005 and 2007. SPIE names him a Fellow in 2007.

7. 2010–2014

   The Nokia Foundation Award

   He wins the Nokia Foundation Award in 2010 for four decades of signal processing research, including work on image processing and compression. In 2012, he becomes a EURASIP Fellow and is elected to the Academia Europaea. He sits on the International Selection Committee of the Millennium Technology Prize for 2013–2014.

8. As of October 2026

   Emeritus professor at Tampere

   He is professor emeritus of signal processing at Tampere University of Technology. With Radomir S. Stanković, Milena Stanković and Claudio Moraga, he publishes Haar spectra of binary bent functions in 2025 and Structure of Haar Spectra of Ternary Bent Functions at the 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic.