Rector

Professor Jón Atli Benediktsson became President of the Governing Council and Rector of the University of Iceland in July 2015. Prior to taking office Jón Atli Benediktsson was a professor in the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has been the Pro-Rector for Science and Academic Affairs since 2009, and has served in various other administrative capacities within the University of Iceland.

Jón Atli graduated with a Ph.D. from Purdue University, West-Lafayette in Indiana, USA in 1990. His research is in the areas of remote sensing, image analysis, signal processing and biomedical engineering. He has authored and co-authored more than 300 research papers and book chapters. He is a Fellow of IEEE (2004) and of SPIE (2013).

He received the Stevan J. Kristof Award (1990), the Young Researcher Award from the Icelandic Research Council (1997), the IEEE Millenium Medal (2000), and Iceland's Electrical Engineer of the Year (award 2013).

Further, he has received many awards for scientific papers, including the Highest Impact Paper Award from the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (2013). Jón Atli was the editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 2003-2008. He is now a member of the editorial board of the flagship journal of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronis Engineers) – Proceedings of IEEE.

In 2011 and 2012 he was the President of IEEE Geosicience and Remote Sensing Society. From 2014, he has been a member of the IEEE Fellow Committee.

Jón Atli is the co-founder of the start-up company Oxymap which has developed equipment and software for the diagnosis of eye disease via digital image analysis. Jon Atli is the co-author of three patents.

Jón Atli has been a Visiting Professor at universities in Italy, England and China. He was also a Visiting Scientist at the Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy (1998), Jón Atli has taught graduate courses at the University of Trento, Italy (annually, 2001-2013), the University of Genoa, Italy (2003) and Jilin University, China (2007).

Jón Atli is married to Stefanía Óskarsdóttir, an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland. They have two sons; Benedikt Atli (1991) and Fridrik (2003).