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Dr. Allen W. Glisson Jr., the new chair of the Department
of Electrical Engineering, is a legend, according to a former student.
“Colleagues, who are veteran electromagnetics analysts, speak
very highly of the pioneering work done at Ole Miss,” said
Dr. Rajan Parakar, who received his master’s degree from UM.
“In fact, Professor Glisson is something of a legend with the
numerical people in our group.”
A new era began for the department of electrical engineering when
the UM professor of electrical engineering became department chair
in July.
A Mendenhall, Miss., native, Glisson first arrived on the UM campus
in 1969. With a quick mind, hard work, and devotion to understanding
mathematics and technology, he became an outstanding student with
superior academic performance. A Taylor Medalist, Glisson received
his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical
engineering here in 1973, 1975, and 1978, respectively.
After completing his doctoral degree, he joined the UM faculty,
achieving the rank of professor of electrical engineering in 1989.
As a professor, he has made significant long-term contributions
in teaching and research to the department’s programs. He was
selected the Outstanding Engineering Faculty Member in 1986 and
again in 1996, received a Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award in 1989,
and was named the 1998 Educator of the Year by the Memphis Section
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Attaining national and international recognition for his research,
Glisson has kept the department at the forefront of electromagnetic
research for more than three decades. His and his colleagues’
cutting-edge research in electromagnetics as applied to microwaves
and antennas has been sponsored by various government agencies and
technology companies.
Most notably, his work contributed to the development of a novel
and innovative basis function for numerical analysis called “Rao-Wilton-Glisson”
(RWG). The work revolutionized the field of computational electromagnetics.
For this, as well as his lifelong contributions to his profession,
he was elected to Fellow rank of the IEEE in 2002.
Glisson and his wife, Elise, reside in Oxford and have two children:
Bryant, a UM 2001 electrical engineering graduate, and Courtenay,
a sophomore at Washington and Lee University.
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