Rice University Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) professor Santiago Segarra has been awarded the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Pierre-Simon Laplace Early Career Technical Achievement Award, a prestigious distinction recognizing emerging leaders whose work is shaping the future of signal processing. The citation honors Segarra “for contributions to graph signal processing and graph-based machine learning.”
The award highlights Segarra’s growing influence in advancing the theoretical and practical foundations of graph-based data analysis — an area that plays an increasingly critical role in understanding complex, interconnected systems. His research bridges signal processing, network science and machine learning, enabling new ways to model, interpret and leverage structured data across engineering, biological and social systems.
Segarra joined Rice University in 2018 and currently serves as the W. M. Rice Trustee Associate Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also holds courtesy appointments in the computer science and statistics departments and is affiliated with Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute. His research focuses on networked systems and data science, with particular emphasis on graph signal processing, optimization and the analysis of signals defined over complex networks.
Originally from Argentina, Segarra earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering with highest honors from the Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires. He later completed both his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania before conducting postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
This recognition marks an exceptional start to the year for Segarra, who also recently received the EURASIP Early Career Award — a rare pairing of honors that underscores the international impact of his work. Together, these accolades reflect the growing visibility of graph-based machine learning as a cornerstone of modern signal processing research.
Segarra will formally receive the IEEE award in Barcelona at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), the flagship annual gathering of the global signal processing community.
Leaders within Rice Engineering and Computing note that Segarra’s recognition highlights both his individual achievements and the department’s continued leadership in cutting-edge research. His work exemplifies how foundational theory can drive practical innovation, positioning Rice at the forefront of emerging technologies that rely on advanced data modeling and analysis.