Joan L. Mitchell

Biography

When you surf the Internet, use a digital camera, or print a color image, you have benefited from Joan L. Mitchell’s contributions to compression methods for faster printing and transmission of image files. Dr. Mitchell was one of the key contributors to the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) algorithm for photographic image compression as well as some of the MPEG (Motion Picture Expert Group) standards for video. Working at IBM with William B. Pennebaker, Dr. Mitchell helped fine tune the JPEG standard into something that was also practical for software. She served as co-editor of the standard and helped define many of the extensions that made it a flexible tool for image compression. Dr. Mitchell was also instrumental in solving throughput bottlenecks affecting IBM high-end printers, enabling for the first time full-color page decoding for JPEG at rated speeds.

An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Mitchell retired from InfoPrint Solutions Company in Boulder, Colorado in 2009, where she was an InfoPrint Fellow.