Nayar Elected to NAE
Shree Nayar, T. C. Chang Professor of Computer Science, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions awarded an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”
In announcing his election, NAE President Charles M. Vest noted that Professor Nayar was being recognized “for the development of computational cameras and physics-based models for computer vision and computer graphics.”
As co-director of the Columbia Vision and Graphics Center and head of the Computer Vision Laboratory (CAVE), Professor Nayar’s research efforts are focused on developing advanced computer vision systems. His laboratory has developed a new class of imaging systems called computational cameras. While the traditional world of cameras has its roots in the pinhole camera (camera obscura), Nayar’s computational cameras use light rays from a myriad of sources, not just those that pass through the pinhole, or lens, of the modern camera. His computational cameras overcome several fundamental limitations of today’s cameras, including field of view, dynamic range and spectrum. Nayar’s inventions have been widely adopted by industry to address applications in digital photography, computer vision and computer graphics.
Professor Nayar, a native of Bangalore, India, received a B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He has been on the faculty of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science since 1991 and was named to the T.C. Chang Professorship in 2002. His other prizes and awards include the David Marr prize twice, in 1990 and in 1995, the David and Lucille Packard Fellowship, National Young Investigator Award, NTT Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award, Keck Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Columbia Great Teacher Award. He has published more than 100 scientific papers and has more than 30 patents in imaging, vision and robotics.
