Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) Research Engineer Joseph Greene has received the IEEE-USA George F. McClure Citation of Honor. This national award recognizes exemplary contributions to advancing professional activities for engineers in the United States.

Greene, of GTRI’s Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL), said his first reaction to the award was shaped by the very security awareness culture he supports at work.

“We are in training season for phishing emails at GTRI,” he said with a laugh. “So, my first reaction was almost disbelief. I thought, ‘There has to be something going on here.’ I went and confirmed it before I let myself believe it was real.”

Once he verified the message was legitimate, the significance of the honor began to sink in.

“Beyond the recognition itself, what really mattered to me was the reflection of impact,” Greene said. “IEEE is really my home away from home. A lot of my time outside of GTRI is dedicated to IEEE and its programming, so to see that work recognized in this way was incredibly meaningful.”

The McClure Citation of Honor is focused on professional activities. For Greene, that focus aligns directly with how he has chosen to invest his time in IEEE and in IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN), the organization’s honor society for electrical and computer engineers.

Greene’s involvement with IEEE-HKN began as an undergraduate at Boston University, and continued through graduate school and into his professional career. Over time, he moved from chapter-level activities into roles that support the wider society, particularly in areas such as data management, AI-enabled tools, and mentoring programs that connect students with alumni and professionals.

He describes IEEE and IEEE-HKN as a kind of infrastructure for the profession, giving students and early-career engineers a place to test their leadership skills, build networks, and learn how to work across disciplines. In the interview, Greene emphasized how much of his volunteer work focuses on creating systems that make those experiences easier to access and more sustainable.

Rather than focusing only on one-time events, he has helped build programs that can be replicated and scaled, from virtual mentoring and career panels to tools that help chapters track engagement and connect with each other. Those efforts support the kind of professional development that the McClure Citation seeks to highlight, including career readiness, leadership, and the ability to engage with broader policy and societal issues that affect engineers.

Greene said that one of the most rewarding aspects of his IEEE-HKN work is seeing students and young professionals realize how much they have to offer, even early in their careers. Through mentoring and leadership opportunities, he has watched them gain confidence, find their communities, and begin to shape the profession they are entering.

That same systems-focused mindset carries over to Greene’s research at GTRI, where he works at the intersection of optics, algorithms, and emerging sensing technologies.

“It is basically optical design meets deep learning to push what is possible with physical systems,” he said, describing his work in computational imaging. “I find myself interfacing across a wide range of projects where I either inspire next-generation algorithms or next-generation optical design to meet key needs in our primarily Department of Defense portfolio.”

In that role, Greene often thinks about how to integrate new concepts into real-world systems in a way that advances capability without introducing unacceptable levels of risk.

“The major drive I have at the Institute is to balance risk with innovation,” he said. “We want designs that are truly new and push forward what our sponsors can do, but we cannot demand an incredible amount of risk that would prohibit us from achieving those successes.”

A significant portion of his recent work focuses on neuromorphic imaging, or event-based vision, a sensing approach that operates differently from traditional cameras.

“The goal of these cameras is to redo the paradigm in which we interrogate the world,” Greene explained. “You are more interested in motion and change than in static walls around you. Event-based cameras respond to action. They suppress a lot of static information and can pull out minute changes in the world around you, even with very faint contrast.”

Because these devices are relatively new and not yet standardized, Greene said there is still foundational work to do.

“These are new and largely unstandardized devices,” he said. “If we take one off the shelf and try to relate it back to theory, there are gaps. We want to calibrate and characterize practical devices so we can provide real guarantees to our sponsors about how they will perform in the real world.”

At the same time, he is helping explore mission-focused applications where the technology’s strengths, such as high dynamic range and performance in ultra–low light, can make a meaningful difference.

“There are very particular use cases where this technology can have a big impact,” Greene said. “It has already generated excitement in areas like autonomous vehicles because of its performance across a wide range of lighting conditions, including ultra–low light.”

Whether he is helping a student chapter modernize its data systems, advising early-career engineers through IEEE-HKN programs, or designing a new imaging approach for a sponsor, Greene sees a common thread running through his volunteer service and his work at GTRI.

Both, he said, are about building structures that help people see more clearly, make better decisions, and respond more effectively to complex problems. The McClure Citation of Honor recognizes that broad kind of impact, one that spans technical leadership, professional development, and community building across the engineering profession.

Joseph Greene is an exemplar of GTRI’s mission to “serve national security” and “educate future technology leaders” as one of “the foremost innovators creating a secure nation, a prosperous Georgia, and a sustainable world.”

Writer: Christopher Weems

Photos: Christopher J. Moore
GTRI Communications
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Atlanta, Georgia

About the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)
The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit, applied research division of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Founded in 1934 as the Engineering Experiment Station, GTRI has grown to more than 3,000 employees, supporting eight laboratories in over 20 locations around the country and performing more than $919 million of problem-solving research annually for government and industry. GTRI's renowned researchers combine science, engineering, economics, policy, and technical expertise to solve complex problems for the U.S. federal government, state, and industry.