PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Richard M. Leahy

An electrical engineer at the University of Southern California, Richard Leahy develops computational imaging methods and software for studying the human brain, from signal processing to deep learning. Born in Surrey, England, he studied at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and joined USC in 1985. His lab released the MEG and EEG source imaging package BrainStorm and, with David Shattuck of UCLA, built the MRI analysis software BrainSuite; in 2019 he coauthored a deep variational autoencoder method for finding brain lesions. He received the 2010 Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award from the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. As of October 2026, he chairs the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at USC.

Badges

Timeline

  1. By 1985

    Electrical engineering at Newcastle

    Born in Surrey, England, in 1960, he earns a B.Sc. in electrical and electronic engineering with first-class honors from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1981. He completes a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the same university.

  2. 1985–1997

    Joining the USC faculty

    He joins USC in 1985 as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and becomes an associate professor in 1991. In 1997, he becomes a professor of electrical engineering, biomedical engineering and radiology and director of the Signal and Image Processing Institute.

  3. 1994–2011

    Source imaging for MEG and EEG

    NIH grants that begin in 1994 fund his work, as principal investigator, on spatio-temporal MEG and EEG source estimation. His lab develops inverse methods for imaging neural activity from magnetoencephalographic and electroencephalographic data and distributes them as the free software package BrainStorm.

  4. 2004–2013

    Chairing ISBI and Fully3D

    He serves as general conference chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) in 2004 and of Fully3D in 2013.

  5. 2010–2011

    Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award

    He receives the 2010 Edward J. Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award from the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. In 2011, he is elected a Fellow of the International Society for Functional Source Imaging.

  6. 2011–2022

    The BrainSuite software

    In 2011, an NIH grant with him as co-principal investigator begins funding BrainSuite, software for analysis and visualization of multimodal brain imaging data. His Biomedical Imaging Group at USC develops it with David Shattuck of UCLA's Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center.

  7. 2019

    A variational autoencoder for lesions

    In 2019, he coauthors an abstract with Haleh Akrami, Anand A. Joshi and Jian Li on finding brain lesions in multispectral MRI of traumatic brain injury. The method trains a deep variational autoencoder on normal brain structure and needs no ground-truth lesion labels; BrainSuite removes skull and other non-brain tissue first.

  8. As of October 2026

    Department chair at USC Viterbi

    He chairs the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at USC and holds the Arthur G. Settle Trust Endowment for USC Leonard Silverman Chair. His lab develops computational methods and software for brain images (BrainSuite) and brain electrophysiology (BrainStorm), and an NIH award that begins in August 2026 names him principal investigator on a BrainStorm BIDS App.

Career

  1. Since 1985University of Southern CaliforniaAssistant Professor, Associate Professor

Education

  1. 1981Newcastle UniversityB.Sc. in electrical and electronic engineering

From the biography.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of Southern California. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. Universities had a net outflow of 2,068 moves in AI careersIncludes University of Southern California. Our estimates of career flows and median h-index across universities and companies in AI, including the role of joint appointments and earlier academic jobs.
  3. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes University of Southern California. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes University of Southern California. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Members/Leahy - Biomedical Imaging Group neuroimage.usc.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. USC - Viterbi School of Engineering - Viterbi Faculty Directory viterbi.usc.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Richard Leahy | USC Profiles profiles.sc-ctsi.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Spring Seminar: Richard Leahy, Ph.D. | VISE | Vanderbilt University vanderbilt.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. NMISC Edward J Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award - IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society ewh.ieee.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. BrainSuite - Biomedical Imaging Group neuroimage.usc.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. TBI Lesion Detection Using a Variational Autoencoder aesnet.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Leadership - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering viterbischool.usc.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. 4 New Faculty Members Join the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering viterbischool.usc.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. Leahy, Richard M. - USC Neuroscience Graduate Program ngp.usc.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.