Dear IAPR Community Members,
Please take a few minutes to respond to the IAPR Spring 2021 Survey (https://tinyurl.com/iaprsurvey2021), an anonymous, short, online form focusing on your opinions and attitudes in the face of the pandemic and our recovery from it as an international research community.
Together we can make your IAPR even better.
Many thanks,
The IAPR 2020-2022 ExCo
Dan Lopresti, Lale Akarun, Terence Sim, Arjan Kuijper, Bob Fisher, and Apostolos Antonacopoulos
It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Herb Freeman, a pioneer in our field and one of the founders of the IAPR more than 40 years ago. The ExCo expresses our deepest condolences to Herb’s family, friends, and colleagues on behalf of the entire IAPR community.
Herb had a long and productive career that touched many, many people. He worked on the development of the first electronic computers in the early days of computing, and helped initiate computing engineering as a discipline at three major U.S. universities. He published over 100 papers, authored a number of books, and helped to establish important journals. He was one of the select group of founders who organized the first “ICPR” in 1973, which marked the start of his leadership service that culminated in his role in the formal founding of IAPR in 1978. Over the years Herb served as a Vice President, Treasurer, and ultimately President of the IAPR. He was awarded the K.S. Fu Prize in 1994.
Herb’s numerous important contributions in the early days of our field place him in very rare company; he will be missed. I encourage you to read the personal remembrances of Herb in the January 2021 Special Issue of the IAPR Newsletter.
With deep sympathy,
Dan Lopresti, IAPR President
It is our pleasure to announce that the recipient of the 2020 J.K. Aggarwal Prize is Professor Abhinav Gupta, Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh,PA, USA.
The citation for the prize is:
“For pioneering contributions to unsupervised and self-supervised
learning in computer vision and robotics.”
The prize will be presented to Professor Gupta prior to his award lecture at ICPR2020 Virtual-Milano, 4 p.m. (CET) on January 12, 2021.
Congratulations to Professor Gupta on this achievement.
Apostolos Antonacopoulos
IAPR President
It is our pleasure to announce that the recipient of the 2020 King-Sun Fu Prize is Professor Ching Yee Suen, Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence (CENPARMI), Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The citation for the prize is:
“For pioneering research and exceptional contributions to handwriting recognition and document understanding in theory, practice, and education.”
The prize will be presented to Professor Suen prior to his award lecture at ICPR2020 Virtual-Milano, 1 p.m. (CET) on January 12, 2021.
Congratulations to Professor Suen on this achievement.
Apostolos Antonacopoulos
IAPR President
It is our pleasure to announce that the recipient of the 2020 Maria Petrou Prize is Professor Maja Pantic, Professor of Affective and Behavioral Computing, Imperial College, London, UK, and AI Scientific Research Lead at Facebook London.
The citation for the prize is:
“For contributions to artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in computer vision and machine learning applied to automatic analysis of human faces, machine understanding of human behaviour, and multimodal recognition of human emotions.”
The prize will be presented to Professor Pantic prior to her award lecture at ICPR2020 Virtual-Milano, 1 p.m. (CET) on January 13, 2021.
Congratulations to Professor Pantic on this achievement.
Apostolos Antonacopoulos
IAPR President
The IAPR Executive Committee and the IAPR community were deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Thomas Huang, one of the most prominent members of the IAPR family, both in terms of his scientific achievements and his significant service to the organization. Professor Huang received the IAPR’s most prestigious honor in 2002, the K.S. Fu Prize, among several additional awards and medals from other scientific societies. He served as a member of the IAPR Governing Board for 10 years as well a member of a number of Standing Committees.
Our heartfelt condolences to Professor Huang’s immediate family and to his large extended (research) family and friends whose feeling of loss is matched in magnitude by the positive impact that Professor Huang had on them (see article in the April 2020 issue of the IAPR Newsletter).
With deep sympathy,
Apostolos Antonacopoulos, IAPR President
It is with great sadness that I write this on behalf of the IAPR Executive Committee and the whole of the IAPR community following the passing of our colleague Reinhard Klette. I would like to express our heartfelt condolences to Reinhard’s family and many friends and colleagues whom he leaves behind too early.
In addition to his deep scientific achievements and impact on early career researchers, Reinhard has contributed wholeheartedly to the work and ethos of the IAPR since its early days. One remarkable feat that is unlikely to ever be replicated is that over his career Reinhard was the key driver (and later GB representative) for two different national associations to join the IAPR (it is very much worth reading about this in the current IAPR Newsletter)! Strongly committed to the IAPR and widely respected, he completed his long service by helping select candidates for the current ExCo as a member of the Nominating Committee (2016-2018).
With deep sympathy,
Apostolos Antonacopoulos, IAPR President
Biennially, at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition, the IAPR awards three prestigious prizes and names its Fellows. ICPR 2020 will take place September 13-18, 2020 in Milan, Italy.
Calls for Nominations have been posted at the IAPR website for:
Newsletter is available in the Publications Section of the IAPR website.
On behalf of the IAPR Executive Committee and the IAPR community as a whole, I’d like to express our heartfelt sympathy to Alfredo’s family and friends. Their loss is also felt deeply by his colleagues at the Parthenope University, the CVPL (the Italian IAPR Member Society of which he was Vice-President), and the members of IAPR societies worldwide with whom he had been actively collaborating.
Alfredo made valuable contributions to the ethos and goals of the IAPR by passionately promoting best practices in Pattern Recognition research, particularly in his excellent work with training the next generations of researchers.
Sincere condolences,
Apostolos Antonacopoulos, IAPR President