After nearly 40 years with the University of Toronto, IEEE Fellow Anastasios (“Tas”) Venetsanopoulos found himself last July at a crossroads in his career. He was on leave after finishing a five-year stint as the school’s dean of faculty for applied science and engineering and was trying to figure out whether to return to research, something he’d done for 37 years as a professor at the university. That’s when a new job came knocking that not only allowed him to expand his research interests but also to apply his administrative skills.

On 1 October, Venetsanopoulos became vice president of research and innovation at Ryerson University in Toronto, just a few blocks from his old campus. In this newly created position, Venetsanopoulos will be responsible for beefing up the university’s research programs and for identifying and pursuing new research areas for the university’s five faculties: Arts; Business; Communication and Design; Community Services; and Engineering, Architecture, and Science. And Venetsanopoulos, under the “innovation” aspect of his position, will also be charged with bringing research results to the marketplace.

“Ryerson had entered research in a timid fashion, but in recent years its research has been increasing rapidly,” Venetsanopoulos says. “I want to speed up this expansion and make sure that innovation also happens.”

Over the past five years, Ryerson—with 23 000 students—has doubled its yearly research funding from Canadian $5 million to more than $10 million. It also has significantly increased its number of research chairs, and the number of research grants the university has received has jumped dramatically. Given the pickup in funding, the school elevated the former position of associate vice president of research to include innovation as well.

And the position will carry weight—it comes with a seat on the school’s executive board, notes Ryerson president, Sheldon Levy. “This position puts Tas at the executive table where all decisions about spending are made,” he says. “Research and innovation will be among the top priorities when decisions about the allocation of resources are made, and it will not be subordinated by other activities.”

If nothing else, Venetsanopoulos comes to his new job well prepared. He was one of the University of Toronto’s most prolific researchers, publishing more than 800 journal and conference papers on digital signal and image processing and digital communications, many of which appeared in IEEE journals. He joined the university’s department of electrical and computer engineering as a lecturer in 1968.

In 1973 he was promoted to assistant professor and became a professor in 1981. He served as chair of the Communications Group and as associate chair of the department of electrical engineering. From July 1997 to June 2001, he was associate chair for graduate studies of the department of electrical and computer engineering. He was named an IEEE Fellow in 1988 for his contributions to digital signal and image processing.

Later in 2001 he was tapped to become the school’s 12th dean of faculty. When his five-year term ended this July, the school gave him a two-year paid leave with no teaching or research responsibilities. While Venetsanopoulos contemplated his next move, colleagues talked him into applying for the Ryerson position.

“This position is a great opportunity because it will carry on my agenda, which is to expand the research enterprise,” says Venetsanopoulos.

He will focus on identifying areas of research that can be commercialized and thus impact the public. Although his personal interest has been in engineering research, his job is to expand research into all areas of the university, including journalism, media, and communications.

Levy says that Venetsanopoulos’ “sophisticated awareness of not only the disciplines that he is in, but also the research disciplines of his colleagues at Ryerson” made him the top choice among the 50 applicants for the job.

“We thought it was important that the person doing this job walked it as well as talked it, and Tas is one of Canada’s, if not the world’s, top researchers,” Levy says. “We also wanted someone who understood the challenges researchers faced.”

GOING GLOBAL At the top of Venetsanopoulos’ to-do list is to form relationships with universities outside Canada. “I hope for some collaborative agreements with international universities, which will allow our students to study abroad at these schools as well as bring students from other countries here to do research in our labs,” he says.

Venetsanopoulos knows firsthand about studying abroad. He was born in Greece and graduated in 1965 from the National Technical University of Athens with a degree in mechanical and electrical engineering. He received a Fulbright scholarship to Yale University in New Haven, Conn., where he earned a master of science degree, followed by a master of philosophy degree and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1966, 1968, and 1969 respectively. Because of the political unrest in Greece in the 1970s, he immigrated to Canada.

Venetsanopoulos also plans to apply his experience with the IEEE in his mission to take Ryerson global. This active IEEE volunteer has served as chair of the IEEE Central Canada Council and has chaired numerous IEEE boards, councils, and technical committees. He’s also been the guest editor or associate editor of several IEEE journals.

One way Venetsanopoulos hopes to put Ryerson on the international map is to have it host IEEE-sponsored conferences. While at the University of Toronto, he organized four IEEE international conferences on speech and signal processing. And he plans to encourage Ryerson’s engineering students to become IEEE student members.

“IEEE provides wonderful opportunities to grow through local and technical involvement,” he says.