New computer vision center planned for UCF

Scientists will soon have a new research center to continue projects, including the exploration of acquiring and understanding images even better than the human brain is capable of doing. Mubarak Shah will be the founding director of the Center for Research in Computer Vision, a department under the Office of Research and Commercialization.

Shah, whose research interests include human activity recognition and visual tracking, has won many awards during his time as a professor at UCF, including the Harris Corporation’s Engineering Achievement Award in 1999 and the Pegasus Professor Award in 2006.

Computer vision duplicates the abilities of human vision by electronically perceiving and understanding an image using computational methods. This is the same technology used in the Xbox Kinect, which follows body motions via computer sensors.

The CRCV will put UCF in a position to capture major grants in this developing research area and support more local industries that can benefit from the technology, M.J. Soileau, vice president for research & commercialization, said in a press release.

Shah has led a computer vision lab at UCF for the past 25 years and is looking to expand with the new center. Shah said his vision for the CRCV is to hire world-class faculty, but he will also welcome existing faculty members to use the center for their research. Three new faculty positions have already gone through initial approval, according to a press release.

“The more resources we have, the more high-quality students and faculty we can attract, and this will help us move to the next era of computer vision research and education at UCF,” Shah said in a press release.

Specifically, Shah is interested in working with faculty at UCF’s College of Medicine on projects such as automatic tracking of E. coli bacteria and early cancer detection. He is also interested in working with the Institute for Simulation and Training and fellow researchers in the College of Engineering and Computer Science on developing robots and driverless cars navigated by computerized sensors.