Mário Figueiredo, from the Pattern and Image Analysis Group at IT in Lisbon, was distinguished with the IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award for the most outstanding paper reporting original work published in any IEEE archival publications with the work “Sparse Reconstruction by Separable Approximation” published in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Vol. 57, Issue7, July 2009, pp. 2479 – 2493. The awarded paper is co-authored by Robert Nowak and Stephen Wright from Wisconsin University (USA).

The IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award was established in 1956 and is presented by the IEEE Board of Directors for the most outstanding paper reporting original work published in any IEEE archival publications (such as Transactions, Journals and Letters), Magazines, or Proceedings. The paper must have been published during a three to five year window prior to the presentation year of the award on the fundamentals of electrical engineering, electronics, computing, and related arts and sciences as represented by IEEE. No more than one award may be given in any year.