Hal H. Ottesen

Dr. Hal Ottesen has been a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota Rochester, since August, 2000. He teaches courses in Digital Signal Processing, Image Processing, Fuzzy Logic and Digital Control. For the last 10 years he has been an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the Mayo Graduate School, Rochester, Minnesota, where he was voted as "Teacher of the Year, 1999" by the graduate students. Dr. Ottesen is also president and owner of Tutorial Technology, Inc. The company was founded in 1994 and specializes in tutorial-teaching and inventive, advanced-technology consulting in areas of digital signal processing, digital servo control, and fuzzy logic. The company is currently engaged in advanced technology consulting the disk drive area and in image processing for medical applications.

Research and advanced technology interests cover adaptive and self-healing systems in the fields of digital signal processing, image processing, and control, where fuzzy logic is used as an adjunct enabler of human experience.

Hal Ottesen worked 32 years for IBM Corp., in San Jose, CA., Boulder, CO., Boca Raton, FL., and Rochester, MN, until his "retirement" as a Senior Technical Staff Member in 1994. Most of the work was done in several areas of advanced technology and development of disk drives. A considerable amount of time was spent on giving internal IBM tutorial classes in disk drive technology to development personnel in Rochester, San Jose, Hursley, England, and Fujisawa, Japan. An Outstanding Technical Achievement Award was received for the development of the world's first all digital, embedded-servo control of the actuator on the IBM 9332 (8-inch) disk drive shipped in 1986.

During this advanced work and later IBM consulting work, Dr. Ottesen's inventions have accumulated: 112 US patents issued as of May, 2005, with more US patent applications pending, and 35 inventions published in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin. He became a Member of IBM Academy of Technology in 1991, and has received the IBM 20th Level Invention Achievement Award (June, 1997).

Hal Ottesen received his B. Sc. (with honors), M. Sc., and Ph. D. all in Electrical Engineering from University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado in 1961, 1962, and 1968, respectively.