Hairong Qi is the Gonzalez Family Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research interests include collaborative signal and image processing, hyperspectral imaging, and bioinformatics. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, numerous best paper awards at international conferences, and was awarded the highest impact paper from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society in 2012.