%0 Journal Article %T In Memorium: Swamy Laxminarayan [1939¨C2005] %A Kenneth R Foster %A Luis G Kun %J BioMedical Engineering OnLine %D 2005 %I BioMed Central %R 10.1186/1475-925x-4-57 %X Swamy grew up in Bangalore, India. Records list his birthdate as May 24, 1939, although he has reportedly confessed to colleagues that he misrepresented his age to gain early admission to university; his real birthdate may be as late as 1943. He received his undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Mysore, India (1957) and Masters (1967) and Ph.D. (1972) from the University of Southampton in the UK. His Ph.D. thesis concerned on-line signals processing and physiological systems, interests that he maintained through his entire professional career.Beginning in 1970, Swamy held research faculty positions at two universities in the Netherlands (1970¨C78). A large part of his career was spent at the University of Medicine and Dentistry with an adjunct appointment at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, both in Newark, New Jersey, where he led programs in research computing and health care informatics. He joined Idaho State University in 2002, where he was a Research Associate Professor at the university and chief of Biomedical Information Engineering at Telehealth Idaho. He had numerous other affiliations along the way, including several adjunct clinical appointments, and visiting or honorary appointments at the Technical University of Brno (Czech Republic) and Tsinghua University (China), as well as several affiliations with private industry.Swamy was a prolific researcher. His resume lists more than 300 technical papers in fields as diverse as biomedical engineering, medical image processing, telehealth, bioterrorism and homeland security. These include numerous original papers, together with a great many conference proceedings and special issues that he edited. Most recently, he was awarded a $3.8 M grant for developing training materials to combat bioterrorism.Swamy's contributions to engineering are varied and prominent. Many were connected with his enthusiastic leadership in engineering societies and editorial work with professional %U http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/4/1/57