Melba Crawford, the Nancy Uridil and Francis Bossu Professor in Civil Engineering, was recognized with the Distinguished Alumni Award for Academic Excellence from The Ohio State University during the 2024 College of Engineering Alumni Awards on October 25. The celebration recognizes alumni from across the College of Engineering who have achieved distinction in their fields or through their extraordinary service contributions since graduating from The Ohio State University.

Melba Crawford is the Nancy Uridil and Francis Bossu Professor at Purdue University, where she is a professor in the Schools of Civil Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Department of Agronomy. Previously, she was an Engineering Foundation Endowed Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she founded an interdisciplinary research and applications development program in space-based and airborne remote sensing. Her research interests focus on development of methods in signal and image processing and their application to natural resource management, environmental monitoring, and agriculture. She is currently co-leading an initiative between the Purdue colleges of agriculture and engineering to develop sensing technologies to advance plant breeding and management practices in agriculture in response to climate change.

Dr. Crawford is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Past President of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, a former IEEE GRSS Distinguished Lecturer, and the previous Treasurer of the IEEE Technical Activities Board. She received the GRSS Outstanding Service Award in 2020. In recognition of her contributions, she received the IEEE GRSS David Landgrebe Award for research advances in image analysis (2021). In May of 2023, Dr. Crawford was presented with the IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal for her contributions to remote sensing technology and leadership in its application for the benefit of humanity.