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Microsoft researcher and Distinguished Scientist Richard Szeliski (opens in new tab) this week received one of the highest honors accorded to an engineer — election to the National Academy of Engineering (opens in new tab).
Szeliski, head of Microsoft Research’s Interactive Visual Media Group (opens in new tab), was elected to the Academy on February 5, 2015, specifically “for contributions to computer vision (opens in new tab), computer graphics (opens in new tab), and interactive image and video rendering.”
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“I was truly astonished and delighted to receive this honor,” Szeliski said after learning of the news. “My strongest reaction was a profound gratitude towards Microsoft Research and all of my collaborators for enabling me to have such an interesting and productive career.
“My time at Microsoft Research has been the most productive and rewarding of my research career,” he added. “Rick Rashid (opens in new tab) and the rest of the lab leadership brought together the world’s best Computer Science researchers and created an environment where we can thrive and produce research and technological breakthroughs that delight millions of people worldwide.”
Szeliski also credits his outstanding set of collaborators not only in Interactive Visual Media, but Computational Photography (opens in new tab) as well, who collectively created some of Microsoft Research’s most popular apps:
- Image Composite Editor (opens in new tab): An advanced panoramic image stitcher,recently updated with new features (opens in new tab), that seamlessly combines images into creates a high-resolution panorama.
- Blink (opens in new tab): A Windows Phone 8 camera app that captures multiple images, allowing you to choose the best one.
- Photosynth (opens in new tab): A powerful set of tools for capturing and viewing the world in 3D, which can be shared to Facebook or published on the Web.
“I’ve been truly fortunate to be in the vanguard of both the image-based rendering and computational photography revolutions,” Szeliski said. “I was fortunate to join Michael Cohen (opens in new tab)’s Lumigraph (opens in new tab) project when that was laying the foundations for the field, and then to have an incredible collaboration with faculty and students at the University of Washington (opens in new tab), which culminated in the Photo Tourism (opens in new tab) project,” which evolved into Photosynth.
A founding editor of Foundations and Trends in Computer Graphics and Vision (opens in new tab), Szeliski finds inspiration from two life-long passions: mathematics — particularly image processing and computer graphics — and, naturally, photography. “My desire to share the visual beauty of the world with my family and friends has inspired many of our research projects.” And he’s particularly excited about the newly evolving First-Person Hyperlapse (opens in new tab), which allows users to easily create time-lapse videos with a smoothly moving camera, removing the camera-jitter typically associated with time lapse.
“Working at Microsoft Research is an absolute delight and inspiration,” he added, “and I’d like to thank both the lab management and all of my incredible collaborators for such an amazing experience.”
Szeliski’s distinguished journey continues, fueled by passion, with an eye toward pushing the boundaries of computer vision and graphics in new and exciting ways.