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ALUMNI

New Image: Through A Lens Brightly

Professor Shree K. Nayar

Shree K. Nayar, inventor of the computational camera and the T. C. Chang Professor of Computer Science, will be the featured speaker at Dean’s Day on Saturday, June 5 at 10:30 a.m. in the C.P. Davis Auditorium. He will deliver the Magill Lecture in Science, Technology and the Arts, on “The Computational Camera: Redefining the Image.”
His research is focused on three broad areas: creating novel vision sensors, designing physics-based models for vision, and developing algorithms for scene interpretation. The work conducted by his research team impacts the fields of digital imaging, computer graphics, man-machine interfaces, robotics, autonomous navigation and surveillance.

As co-director of the Columbia Vision and Graphics Center and head of the Columbia Automated Vision Environment (CAVE), Prof. Nayar’s research efforts are developing advanced computer vision systems. His laboratory has developed a new class of imaging systems that enable efficient capture of high resolution spherical images, both regular and stereoscopic. The stereoscopic spherical image enables the viewer to perceive the depths of objects in the scene as he pans and tilts around, using stereo (red/green) glasses.

While the traditional world of cameras has its roots in the pinhole camera (camera obscura), Nayar’s computational camera uses light rays from a myriad of sources, not just those that pass through the pinhole, or lens, of the modern camera. The result is a photograph that shows exceptional detail in all areas, including those that would be in shadow in photographs from an ordinary camera. The camera can, in effect, shed light on images and redefine what is hiding even from the naked eye.

A view of campus taken with the Omnicam, a 360-degree camera developed by Prof. Nayar.

His technology can enhance the range of measurable brightness values of virtually any imaging system, film or digital, still and video cameras, as well as medical and industrial imaging systems based on X-ray, infra-red, synthetic aperture radar and magnetic resonance imaging. During his lecture, Prof. Nayar will present examples that demonstrate how the computational camera redefines the notion of an image, and hence has the potential to impact the very nature of visual communication.

Prof. 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 Engineering faculty since 1991 and was named to the T.C. Chang Professorship in 2002.

He is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including 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 and the Keck Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has published more than 100 scientific papers and had 30 patents granted or pending in imaging, vision and robotics.