Rate My Professor Javier Jo

Javier A. Jo, Ph.D., is the Ted and Cuba Webb Presidential Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, a position he has held since joining the faculty in 2019. He also directs the NIH-P20 COBRE Oklahoma Center of Medical Imaging for Translational Cancer Research. Jo earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru in 1996. He then pursued graduate studies at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, obtaining an M.S. in electrical engineering with a focus on signal and image processing in 2000 and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering specializing in physiological modeling in 2002. Following his doctorate, Jo served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from 2002 to 2005 and as a project scientist in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Davis in 2006. From 2006 to 2019, he was on the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, where he founded the Laboratory for Optical Diagnosis and Imaging.

The mission of Jo's research program is to develop optical sensing and imaging technologies that advance the study of pathophysiological mechanisms underlying major human diseases and enhance clinical management of affected patients. His work uniquely integrates the design and validation of optical spectroscopy and imaging instrumentation with computational tools and methods for the nondestructive, non- or minimally invasive morphological, molecular, and physiological characterization of biological and engineered tissues across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Jo's research interests include biomedical optical imaging and sensing technology, biomedical signal and image processing, machine learning, medical computer-aided diagnosis, and medical technology translation and commercialization. He has secured over $12 million in external research funding as principal investigator or co-principal investigator from sources such as the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, and Qatar National Research Fund. In recognition of his contributions to integrating optical imaging and artificial intelligence for biomedical applications, Jo was elected a Fellow of Optica in 2023 and to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2022. He serves as a topical editor for Optics Letters published by Optica and as a standing member of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Translational Imaging Science Study Section. Jo teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in biomedical instrumentation, signal and image processing, and statistics at the University of Oklahoma.