Chellappa Named Distinguished University Professor

Rama Chellappa, chair of the A. James Clark School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Minta Martin professor of engineering, has been named a University of Maryland distinguished university professor, the most prestigious internal honor on the campus. Fewer than 65 active professors have received this designation.

“[Rama’s] dedication toward research, scholarship and service is evident in almost everything we do,” says Amitabh Varshney, professor of computer science and director of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).

Chellappa’s research includes signal and image processing, computer vision, pattern recognition, multi-dimension stochastic processes, statistical interference, image analysis, robust and secure biometrics, and artificial intelligence in computer vision. In 2016, he led a UMIACS team that won the information science category of the University of Maryland’s Invention of the Year competition.

Honors awarded outside of UMD include fellowships with the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Over the course of his career, Chellappa has received the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award; four IBM Faculty Development Awards; an Excellence in Teaching Award from the School of Engineering at USC; two paper awards and the K.S. Fu Prize from the International Association of Pattern Recognition, Society, Technical Achievement and Meritorious Service Awards from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the Technical Achievement, and Meritorious Awards from the IEEE Computer Society.

Other honors Chellappa has received from UMD include a Distinguished Faculty Research fellowship, a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher award, the Outstanding Faculty Research Award from the College of Engineering, an Outstanding Innovator Award from the Office of Technology Commercialization, and an Outstanding GEMSTONE Mentor Award.

Chellappa is 1 of 9 faculty members who will be honored at convention this fall. Other awardees include Gary Rubloff, who is an ECE affiliate faculty member and the founder of Maryland NanoCenter, and Larry Davis, a professor of computer science who is the current director of the current director of the Center for Automation Research, 1 of 16 labs and centers in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).

Published August 15, 2016