Narendra Ahuja received the B.E. degree with honors in electronics engineering in 1972 from Birla Institute of Science and
Technology, Pilani, India; M.E. degree with distinction in electrical communication engineering in 1974 from Indian Institute of
Science, Bangalore, India; and Ph.D. degree in computer science in 1979 from
University of Maryland, College Park, USA. From 1974 to 1975, he was with the Department of Electronics, Government of
India, New Delhi. Since 1979, he has been with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he is currently
Donald Biggar Willet Professor of Engineering, in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, Beckman Institute, and Coordinated Science Laboratory.
His research is on integrated use of multiple visual sources of scene information for image sensing, analysis and synthesis, and their
applications. His research interests are broadly in computer vision, robotics, image processing, image synthesis,
sensors, and parallel algorithms, and the use of information technology in societal
development. His research emphasizes integrated use of multiple image sources of scene information to construct
three-dimensional descriptions of scenes; the use of integrated image analysis for realistic image synthesis; parallel architectures and
algorithms and special sensors for computer vision; and use of the results of image analysis for a variety of applications including
visual communication, image manipulation, video retrieval, robotics, and
scene navigation.
He received the 1999 Emanuel R. Piore award of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, and the 1998 Technology Achievement Award of the
International Society for Optical Engineering. He received honorable mention
for the 1999 University of Illinois Award for Guiding Undergraduate Research. He was
selected as Associate (1998-99) and Beckman Associate (1990-91) in the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study. He
received founding University Scholar Award (1985), NSF/White House's founding Presidential Young Investigator Award (1984),
UGC Fellowship (192-74), National Scholarship (1967-72), and President of India's Merit
Award (1966). He was selected as President of India's (Eagle) Scout (1966).
He is fellow of: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American
Association for Artificial Intelligence, International Association for
Pattern Recognition, Association for Computing Machinery, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and International Society for
Optical Engineering. He has served on the editorial boards of the journals
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence; Computer
Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing; Journal of Mathematical Imaging and
Vision; Journal of Pattern Analysis and Applications; Int. Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology; and Journal of Information Science and
Technology, and as guest coeditor of Artificial Intelligence Journal's 1995
special issue on vision.
He has coauthored two books: Pattern Models (Wiley, 1983), Motion and Structure from Image Sequences (Springer-Verlag, 1992) and Face Detection and Hand Gesture Recognition for Vision-Based Human Computer
Interaction (Kluwer, 2001). He has coedited the book Advances in Image Understanding (IEEE Press, 1996). He has
published about 20 book chapters, 70 journal papers and 200 conference
papers. He has received or applied for 7 patents. He has graduated 23 Ph.D.
students and 30 M.S. students. He has supervised 45 undergraduate research
projects. He has been a chair/committee member/keynote speaker for 35 national and international
conferences. He has served as reviewer for over 60 professional journals, magazines and conferences. He has developed and
taught 4 new courses, established 2 new laboratories and taught a number of
engineering courses. He has codeveloped and taught 2 new interdisciplinary
courses. The results of his research have been used in industrial systems at General Electric, Westinghouse,
Lockheed, Honeywell and Advanced Technology, Inc., and for the development
of a radar system. He helped initiate an automation effort at Corning, Inc.,
and collaboration among Illinois Department of Agriculture, University of
Illinois dairy, and a dairy plant. He has consulted with about 15 national and international, commercial and government
organizations.
