Carole Teolis and Rama Chellappa Inducted into Innovation Hall of Fame

Two members of the ECE community were inducted into the A. James. Clark School of Engineering Innovation Hall of Fame on Thursday, February 20^th, 2025. The Innovation Hall of Fame (IHOF) was established in to recognize a culture of innovation and excellence by Maryland engineers and to inspire the next generation of engineers, innovators, and inventors.

ECE alumna Carole Teolis (’86, M.S. ’89, Ph.D. ’94), Cofounder and CTO of TRX Systems, was recognized for improving security, aiding military operations, and protecting lives through GPS-denied positioning technologies and infrastructure-free tracking solutions.

Teolis earned dual B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, and master’s and doctorate degrees in Dr. Carole Teolis electrical engineering from UMD. Her doctoral research in signal processing and control systems provided the framework needed to address the complex challenges presented in navigation and localization technologies where GPS is not available or compromised. She has dedicated her professional career to the pursuit of engineering research and development that is both impactful and marketable.

Teolis is the co-founder and chief technology officer of TRX Systems, which started as a Clark School Mtech Ventures incubator company and has grown into a successful commercial company. Under Teolis’ leadership, TRX has distinguished itself as an industry leader in developing infrastructure-free, GPS-denied navigation and mapping solutions. TRX’s core technology comprises innovative algorithms and hardware that integrate satellite-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) data with inputs from inertial sensors, maps, and other sources to reliably track user positions in environments where GPS signals are unavailable or compromised.

TRX technology has provided reliable navigation for military personnel, first responders, and commercial operators in the most challenging conditions. Through Teolis’ efforts, TRX technology has been delivered to numerous national stakeholder organizations including the U.S. Army, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Air Force, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Homeland Security.

In 2023, TRX was selected to provide the U.S. Army with its Dismount Assured PNT System, which was selected as the best device to provide soldiers with a navigation and positioning solution that is reliable even in contested environments.

Professor Rama Chellappa, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins University and College Park Professor, University of Maryland, was recognized for advancing global safety and security through transformative advancements in AI, including face recognition and gait analysis.

Dr. Rama Chellappa Chellappa is a UMD College Park Professor who served as chair of the Clark School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2011 to 2018. He is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering (Whiting School of Engineering) and Biomedical Engineering (School of Medicine) with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.

Chellappa’s research interests and applications include artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine intelligence, and signal and image processing, with applications in biometrics, self-driving cars, forensics, and 2D and 3D modeling of faces, objects, and terrain. His research has greatly advanced the field of automatic face recognition by introducing the use of local and global facial features, and designing the first Bayesian methods for video face recognition. He has led large scale studies in conjunction with government agencies that have resulted in facial recognition systems that are now used by the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security.

Chellappa has also worked on gait analysis, which can apply to a range of uses from diagnosing Parkinson's disease to human identification at a distance. He also developed methods for whole-body and iris-based recognition of humans. He holds nine patents and is a recipient of numerous awards that recognize his contributions in research, teaching, innovation, and mentoring. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, as well as a Fellow of AAAI, AAAS, ACM, AIMBE, IAPR, IEEE, NAI, OSA, and the Washington Academy of Sciences.

Published February 26, 2025