Yuan named Fellow of the International Association of Pattern Recognition

By Nicole Capozziello

The prestigious IAPR Fellow Award was introduced in 1994 and since then has biennially recognized individuals for their distinguished contributions to the field of pattern recognition and to IAPR activities. In 2018, IAPR selected a total of 20 IAPR fellows (0.25% of its total members), with four coming from North America.

“We are fortunate to have recruited a rising star like Junsong,” says Chunming Qiao, IEEE Fellow, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. “Our department has faculty who are world leaders in pattern recognition and Junsong is the fourth faculty member who has received this distinction. This will certainly elevate our reputation and help further strengthen our research and education in this area.”

Since joining the faculty in spring of 2018, Yuan has been offering courses in computer vision and image processing, which are in high demand from students, while establishing his research program. His research interests include computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, and multimedia retrieval.

“The major goal of my research is to make computers see and understand the real world, through cameras,” said Yuan. “For example, I teach cameras to identify where pedestrians are in a street, what they are doing or what they want to do, so that autonomous cars can act intelligently like human beings. In a supermarket, this technology can help the supermarket make value of customers’ behavior data.”

This past year, Yuan also served as program co-chair for the International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, or ICME’18. He will also be Area Chair of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2019, which is the top conference of computer vision. In addition, Yuan serves as the associate editor of several journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology.

“Junsong's work on computer vision and its applications to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars, will no doubt advance UB's research agenda in establishing a new AI institute focusing on autonomous vehicles, healthcare, and other applications,” asserted Qiao.

Yuan is excited to continue his work, with the fellowship encouraging his long term commitment to researching and teaching on computer vision and pattern recognition.