Ingrid Daubechies, a professor at Princeton University and best known for her work with wavelets in image compression, will speak at a public lecture at the University of Minnesota Wednesday. The lecture, “Surfing with Wavelets,” will look at the tools used for analyzing wavelets. Wavelets are used for image compression by the FBI for encoding digitized fingerprint records and also in medicine for organizing images from MRI scans. Fadil Santosa, director of the University’s Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), said Daubechies is one of the most important mathematicians of our time. âÄúShe is like the rock star of mathematics,âÄù he said. âÄú She basically built the mathematical foundations for wavelets.âÄù Daubechies has received many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, referred to as the âÄúgenius award,âÄù by Santosa. Santosa said the award is $500,000 dollars with no strings attached. The lecture is part of (IMA) series, “Math Matters,âÄù and will begin at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 29 in Room 125, Willey Hall.