Alan Bovik

Al Bovik was educated at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (PhD 1984). He has made numerous fundamental contributions to the fields of digital photography, digital television, digital image processing, digital video processing, digital cinema, and computational visual perception. He is particularly well known for his work on low-level vision, natural scene modeling, image quality, and video quality.[3]

He has published more than 900 articles and books in these areas. He is also the author/editor of The Handbook of Image and Video Processing (Academic Press, 2nd edition, 2005), with Zhou Wang of Modern Image Quality Assessment (Morgan and Claypool, 2006), and the author/editor of the companion books The Essential Guide to Image Processing and The Essential Guide to Video Processing (Academic Press, 2009). Overall, his work has been cited in the scientific and engineering literature more than 100,000 times according to Google Scholar.[4] He is one of the most highly cited engineers in the world according to the Web of Science Group.[5]

He is a Fellow of the IEEE, The Optical Society,[6] the Society of Photo-Optical and Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (HonFRPS). He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2008.[6]

Bovik is credited with the development of order statistic filters, the image modulation model, computational modeling of visual texture perception, theories of foveated image processing, and for widely used and disseminated image quality and video quality computational models and measurement tools that are used throughout the television and cinematic industries. His contributions include the invention or co-invention of the Emmy Award-winning Structural Similarity (SSIM) video quality measurement tool, the MOVIE Index and the Visual Information Fidelity (VIF) algorithms, all reference models that predict human perception of image quality or distortion; the RRED indices, which are a family of reduced reference image and video quality prediction models, and BRISQUE, BLIINDS, DIIVINE and NIQE, which are a new breed of image and video quality prediction models that produce accurate predictions of human judgments of picture quality without the benefit of any reference information. His picture and video quality models SSIM, MS-SSIM, VIF, MOVIE, BRISQUE, and NIQE currently process a significant percentage of all bits transmitted both in the United States as well as globally, and are implemented in commercial cable, satellite, broadcast, streaming video, television, home cinema / disc, and social media quality monitoring and control workflows around the world.

He served as the founder and First General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP). He also co-founded (with David Munson, Jr.) the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing and remains as its longest-serving Editor-in-Chief, with a tenure of six years.

Bovik's academic legacy includes serving as the supervising professor of more than 50 PhD graduates, more than 50 master's degree recipients, and more than a dozen post-doctoral researchers.

He has created widely used, adopted, and cited books and online courseware, including The Handbook of Image and Video Processing (Academic Press, 2000, 2005), Modern Image Quality Assessment (Morgan & Claypool, 2006), The Essential Guide to Image Processing (Academic Press, 2009), and The Essential Guide to Video Processing (Elsevier Academic Press, 2009). His award-winning online courseware is used internationally: SIVA –[7] Courseware for Signal, Image, Video and Audio Processing. This online courseware offers broad, deep online curricula for digital image and video processing and digital signal processing. SIVA includes hundreds of signal, image and video processing demonstrations delivering live, interactive audio-visual experiences of signal and image processing algorithms.

Bovik has received a number of major international awards. These include:

• A Technology and Engineering Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) in October 2021 for the “Development of perceptual metrics for video encoding optimization.”[8]
• The Progress Medal from the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in November 2019 "in recognition of any invention, research, publication or other contribution which has resulted in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense."[9][10] Bovik was also named an Honorary Fellow of RPS (HonFRPS).
• The IEEE Fourier Award in 2019 “For seminal contributions and high-impact innovations to the theory and application of perception-based image and video processing.”[11][12]
• The Edwin H. Land Medal from The Optical Society of America in 2017 “For substantially shaping the direction and advancement of modern perceptual image quality theory, and for energetically engaging industry to transform his ideas into global practice.”[13]
• A Primetime Emmy Award (Primetime Emmy Engineering Award) for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (The Television Academy) in October 2015 for his work on video quality prediction technology.[14]
• The Norbert Wiener Society Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society in 2013, “For fundamental contributions to digital image processing theory, technology, leadership and education.”[15]

In addition he has been recognized by the following honors:

• 1997: Leo L. Beranek Meritorious Service Award[16] of the IEEE Signal Processing Society
• 2000: IEEE Third Millennium Medal[17]
• 2005: Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award[18] of the IEEE Signal Processing Society
• 2007: Carl Friedrich Gauss Education Award[19] of the IEEE Signal Processing Society
• 2008: Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign[20]
• 2009: IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award[21]
• 2009: The University of Texas at Austin Hocott Distinguished Centennial Engineering Research Award[22]
• 2010: IS&T/SPIE Imaging Scientist of the Year[23]
• 2012: SPIE Technology Achievement Award[24]
• 2013: IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award[25]
• 2013: IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award (co-author)[26]
• 2013: IS&T Honorary Member Award[27]
• 2016: IEEE Circuits and Systems for Video Technology Best Paper Award[28]
• 2016: The University of Texas at Austin Joe J. King Professional Engineering Achievement Award[29]
• 2017: Google Scholar Classic Paper in the area Signal Processing[30]
• 2017: Google Scholar Classic Paper in the area Computer Vision & Pattern Recognition[31]
• 2017: IEEE Signal Processing Letters Best Paper Award[32]
• 2017: IEEE Signal Processing Society Sustained Impact Paper Award[33]
• 2018: EURASIP Best Paper Award[34]
• 2019: IEEE ICIP Pioneer Award, “For unparalleled leadership and contributions to the image processing community.”
• 2020: EURASIP Best Paper Award[35]
• 2020: The University of Texas at Austin Career Research Excellence Award[36]