WILLIAM B. KOUWENHOVEN had a long and distinguished career at Hopkins spanning 60 years, with service on the faculties at both the schools of Engineering and Medicine. He is considered to be the grandfather of biomedical engineering.
Dr. Kouwenhoven served as the second dean of the School of Engineering from 1938 to 1954. An electrical engineer, he was best known for his contributions to medicine, most notably the development of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and the invention of the electric heart defibrillator, for which he received a prestigious Lasker Award. Dr. Kouwenhoven was the first to be awarded an honorary doctor of medicine degree from Hopkins. He died in 1975.
Held by Jerry L. Prince
JERRY L. PRINCE, the William B. Kouwenhoven Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, holds joint appointments at the School of Medicine in both radiology and biomedical engineering and secondary appointments in both computer science and applied mathematics and statistics. He is co-developer of HARP MRI (harmonic phase magnetic resonance imaging), a system that allows doctors to see the condition of heart muscles in seconds, for potential use in screening and monitoring cardiovascular disease. His current research interests include imaging processing and computer vision with primary application to medical imaging. Dr. Prince joined Hopkins in 1989, and received the 1993 National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellows Award. He was also honored as Maryland’s 1997 Outstanding Young Engineer and as a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2004.