Do named 2014 IEEE Fellow

ECE Associate Professor Minh N Do has been announced as an IEEE Fellow for 2014. Do was recognized for his contributions to image representation and computational imaging. In addition to his position as an associate professor of ECE, Do has a full-time appointment with the Coordinated Science Lab, a part-time appointment with the Beckman Institute, and an affiliate associate professorship with the Department of Bioengineering.

IEEE Fellows are elevated by the IEEE Board of Directors, which chooses the fellows based on nominees’ records of accomplishment. The Fellow grade is the highest grade of membership within IEEE. Of more than 400,000 members from around the world, 293 individuals were named IEEE Fellows this year.

The IEEE cited Do’s contributions to the area of image representation as instrumental to his elevation to fellowship status. One of Do’s image representation projects in particular stands out. With his first group of PhD students, Do developed a new way of representing images that can capture geometrical structures, which are typically the dominant features in images and multi-dimensional data. He published this theory, along with software that allows users to readily apply it. The project’s popularity far surpassed the team’s expectations.

“Google Scholar showed more than 2,700 citations, and our software received, typically, 50 to 100 downloads per month,” Do said.

Do’s other crucial contributions cited by the IEEE are in the area of computational imaging. Do’s work in the area emerged from the interdisciplinary nature of ECE and the rest of the College of Engineering.

“The goal is to extract information from this massive amount of visual information,” Do said, “and to have ways we can present it in a very compact form, so in the end, a human can quickly look at it and make sense of these data.”

The practice has applications in a wide range of disciplines. Some of Do’s interests are in biomedical imaging and biology. When observing cell behavior over a period of several hours or days, researchers can extract an enormous amount of data in images of the cells, too much to analyze directly. This is where computational imaging comes into play.

“We can automate all of this, and we can then develop a theory of how the cells evolve,” Do said.

Do is also interested in exploring emerging possibilities of computational imaging involving the unprecedented number of images available on the Internet.

“A smartphone can take a lot of images, and often we don’t have time to look through all of them,” Do said. “Every day, almost half a billion photos are uploaded on Facebook.”

Do believes computational imaging can make more sense of these images.

“We can take the tools and make a real impact for both professionals and everyday consumers,” he said.

Do said that he is honored to be an IEEE Fellow and humbled to be an ECE faculty member. He said many ECE ILLINOIS faculty earn fellowship status with the IEEE, often by the time they become senior faculty. The department now has 42 IEEE Fellows.

“That’s really a statement of how strong of a reputation the department has,” he said.

The IEEE is the world’s largest professional organization for advancing technology, and is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas, including aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications, and biomedical engineering. The IEEE also publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature on electrical and electronics engineering and computer science, and is a leading developer in the international standards of telecommunications, information technology, and power generation products and services.