Biography

Education

• B.E. (with honors) in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the University of Madras, 1975.
• M.S. (with distinction) in electrical communication engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 1977.
• M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, 1978 and 1981.

Awards

• IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award, 2008.
• IEEE Signal Processing Society Meritorious Service award, 2008.
• IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer, 2008-2010.
• A.J. Clark School of Enginering Faculty Outstanding Research Award, 2007.
• Outstanding Invention of 2006, (Information Sciences), Office of Technology Commercialization, UMD (with A. Sundaresan)
• Co-author of Best Student paper Award, International Conference on Pattern recognition, Hong Kong, August 2006 (with A. Sundaresan)
• Minta Martin Professor of Engineering, 2005-2010.
• IEEE Computer Society Meritorious Service Award, 2004.
• Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, UMD, 2003.
• 2000 IEEE Signal Processing Society technical achievement Award.
• Distinguished Research Faculty Fellow, University of Maryland, 1996-1998.
• Best paper award, International Conf. on Pattern Recognition, The Hague, Netherlands, August 1992 (with Q. Zheng).
• Outstanding Teacher Award, School of Engineering, University of Southern California, 1990. (Includes a cheque for $4,000.)
• Four NASA Certificates for SAR Segmentation Using Imaging Physics and Markov Random Fields (with E.J. Rignot).
• NSF Presidential Young Investigator (1985-1990)
• IBM Faculty Development Awards, 1985, 2006, 2007.
• Was presented the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial award, by the Department of Education, Government of India, through Madras University, India in 1975.
• Was awarded a Gold medal and $125 by the Old Boy's Association of College of Engineering, Guindy, Madras, India in 1975.
• Secured first rank in Bachelor of Engineering (Honors) in the University of Madras, Madras, India in 1975.
• Was a recipient of National Scholarship awarded by Government of India during the period 1969-1975.

Organizations

• Eta Kappa Nu, Member
• Tau Beta Pi, Member
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, (Fellow)
• International Association for Pattern Recognition, (Fellow)

Biography

Rama Chellappa received the B.E. (Hons.) degree from the University of Madras, India, in 1975 and the M.E. (Distinction) degree from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1977.  He received the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. Degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 1978 and 1981 respectively. 

Since 1991, he has been a Professor of electrical engineering and an affiliate Professor of computer science at University of Maryland, College Park.  He is also affiliated with the Center for Automation Research (Director) and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (Permanent member).  Currently, he holds a Minta Martin Professorship in the College of Engineering. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, he was an Assistant (1981-1986), Associate Professor (1986-1991) and Director of the Signal and Image Processing Institute (1988-1990) at University of Southern California, Los Angeles.  Over the last 27 years, he has published numerous book chapters, peer-reviewed journal and conference papers in image and video processing, analysis and recognition.  He has also co-edited/co-authored six books on neural networks, Markov random fields, face/gait-based human identification and activity modeling.  His current research interests are face and gait analysis, 3D modeling from video, automatic target recognition from stationary and moving platforms, surveillance and monitoring, hyper spectral processing, image understanding, and commercial applications of image processing and understanding. 

Dr. Chellappa has served as an associate editor of four IEEE Transactions.  He was a co-Editor–in- Chief of Graphical models and Image Processing and also served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PATTERN ANALYSIS AND MACHINE. INTELLIGENCE during 2001-2004.  He served as a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Board of Governors during 1996-1999 and as its Vice President of Awards and Membership during 2002-2004.  He has received several awards, including an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1985, three IBM Faculty Development Awards, the 1990 Excellence in Teaching Award from the School of Engineering at USC and the 2000 Technical Achievement Award from IEEE Signal Processing Society. He co-authored the 1992 Best Industry Related Paper (with Q. Zheng) and the 2006 Best Student Authored Paper in the Computer Vision Track (with A. Sundaresan), both presented at International Conferences on Pattern Recognition held in 1992 and 2006 respectively. He was elected as a Distinguished Faculty Research Fellow (1996-1998) and as a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher (2003) at University of Maryland. He is a co-recipient (with A. Sundaresan) of the 2007 Outstanding Innovator Award from the Office of Technology Commercialization and received the A. J. Clark School of Engineering 2007 Faculty Outstanding Research Award. He is a Golden Core Member of IEEE Computer Society and also received its Meritorious Service Award in 2004. He is serving as a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Signal Processing Society and received its Meritorious Service Award at ICASSP 2008. Recently, he has been selected to receive a Technical Achievement Award from IEEE Computer Society. He is a Fellow of IEEE and the International Association for Pattern Recognition.  He has served as a General and Technical Program Chair for several IEEE international and national conferences and workshops.