Sun wins 2023 Turner Dissertation Award

Yu Sun, who earned a doctorate degree in computer science from Washington University in St. Louis in 2022, was recently awarded the 2023 Turner Dissertation Award by the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering. The award recognizes the author of the best doctoral dissertation from the previous calendar year. 

Sun’s dissertation, titled “Integrating Physical Models and Deep Priors for Computational Imaging,” was recognized for its “significant contributions to the fields of computational imaging, computer vision and machine learning.”

“Yu studies how modern deep learning methods can be integrated with traditional model-based approaches to improve computational imaging solutions,” committee members wrote in the award announcement. “His thesis proposed a unified theory, methods for scalability and applications to real-world problems, such as biomedical image restoration and reconstruction. The impact of Yu’s work is evident in his numerous publications in highly selective conferences.”

The Turner Dissertation Award was created in honor of Jonathan Turner, former professor and two-time chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. Turner has been awarded 30 patents for his work on switching systems and is the author of many widely cited publications. He was inducted to the National Academy of Engineering in 2007 and is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He has received numerous awards including the IEEE Millennium Medal, the Founder’s Day Distinguished Faculty Award from the university and two Engineering Alumni Achievement awards from the School of Engineering.

Turner became professor emeritus in 2014 but continues to work on selected research projects.

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