Dr. James McNames, an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is director of the Biomedical Signal Processing (BSP) Laboratory. The mission of the BSP lab is to advance the art and science of extracting clinically significant information from physiologic signals. The lab primarily focuses on clinical projects in close partnership with colleagues at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), located less than 2 miles from Portland State University.

"Our ultimate goal is to provide physicians with better information that will enable them to make better critical decisions and improve patient outcome." The BSP lab consists of many engineering students at PSU, both undergraduate and graduate, and faculty from PSU and OHSU. "One of our first projects was to enter an international competition to determine whether obstructive sleep apnea could be detected from the electrocardiogram alone. We won the competition with an accuracy of 92.6%."

Dr. McNames is also a member of the Integrated Circuits Design and Test laboratory and is developing new methods of data analysis and data mining to improve statistical quality control in close partnership with LSI Logic in Gresham, OR. "We have made many contributions that have helped LSI learn how to extract new and useful information about their semiconductor manufacturing process."

Dr. McNames obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in the spring of 1999. He has been a member of the ECE department at Portland State since the fall of 1999. He received an Outstanding Teaching Award from the Maseeh College in 2001 and 2003, and the Professor of the Year Award from the PSU IEEE student branch in 2003. He is also chair of the Oregon chapter of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.