My main research interests at this time are in sensor networks, in general,
and camera networks, in particular.
I am as interested in the networking
aspects of, say, wireless cameras working together as I
am in using computational geometry to fuse information
acquired from multiple viewpoints.
Since ultimately whatever can be done with computers depends
much on how you program them and what data
abstractions and control abstractions you use in those programs, I am also
strongly interested in high-level programming languages and
those aspects of software engineering that relate to lending
organization to software so that it can be extended and maintained
easily. Additionally, considering that when you try to create wireless-based
systems for distributed intelligence, you have no choice but to
pay close attention to the security aspects of the
communication between the nodes, that should explain my interest
in computer and network security.
If you are a student and if you wish to work with me, there are a number of entry points into my research. I believe any research-minded student with a background in computer-related, signal-processing-related, or controls-related areas could do productive work along the lines of my research. At some point, the student would need to take our courses in networking, computer vision, machine learning, data mining, etc. The math courses that are useful for this kind of research are those that deal with graph theory, differential geometry, algebraic topology, etc. Over the years I have noticed that the students who excel in the kinds of things I do are those who are intrigued by how humans think, by the mysteries of human perceptual faculties, and by the question of whether or not computers can be endowed with any of human sensori-motor capabilities, even at primitive levels. Students who have finished their Ph.D under my supervision (fortyone so far) have gone on to occupy challenging positions in academia and industry. Universities where some of these students currently work include Ohio-State and University of Illinois, and those who are in industry have gone to places like IBM, GE, AT&T, Interval, Apple, SRI International, Siemens Research, Adept Robotics, Analogic, Honeywell, Sandia Labs, ERIM, TASK, and others. The RVL alumnus who has attained the highest rank in academia is Prof. Kim Boyer, now a full Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ohio-State University. And, the RVL alumnus who has risen the highest in industry is Dr. Carl Crawford, currently a Vice-President at Analogic Corporation. My other former students who have become luminaries in their own right include Charles Jakowatz, Malcolm Slaney, David Nahamoo, Keith Andress, Hyun Yang, Akio Kosaka, and Seth Hutchinson. Charles "Jack" Jakowatz, my first Ph.D. student, has become one of the leading figures in the country in synthetic aperture imaging. An author of a well-known text on the topic of synthetic aperture imaging, Jack is currently a group leader at Sandia Nation Lab. Besides being a co-author on one of my books, Malcolm Slaney was one of the key researchers at Interval Corporation, a new west-coast company that was established by the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen as an incubator of new ideas in high technology. Malcolm is now with the IBM Almaden Research Labs, San Jose, CA. David Nahamoo is the Head of the Human Language Technologies Department at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. David has been all over in the national newspapers and news-magazines during the last couple of years. His 60-person group at Yorktown Heights developed the much-talked about ViaVoice and MedSpeak voice recognition IBM products. Keith Andress is currently the Director of Software Engineering at Seimens Medical Solutions, Nuclear Medicine Group. Hyun Yang, as a professor in the prestigious Korea Advanced Insitute of Technology, has emerged as one of the leading researchers in Korea in areas such as neural networks and robotics. Akio Kosaka, in his capacity as a member of the research staff of Olympus Corporation in Japan, is investigating new ways of combining computer image processing with digital imaging devices. Seth Hutchinson, now an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois in Champagne-Urbana, has made a name for himself by doing pioneering work in vision-guided servoing of robots. |