Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and artificial intelligence expert Rama Chellappa has achieved one of the engineering field’s highest distinctions: election to the National Academy of Engineering.
Academy membership recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, or education. Members advise the U.S. government on matters pertaining to engineering and technology.
Chellappa, who holds appointments in electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering and is chief scientist at JHU’s Institute for Assured Autonomy, was honored for “contributions to digital image analysis, automatic face recognition, and applications.”
Chellappa studies computer vision, artificial intelligence, and machine learning in areas ranging from biometrics, smart cars, and forensics to 2D- and 3D-modeling of faces, objects, and terrain. His book, Can We Trust AI? (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022) explores topics such as transparency of AI in regard to the so-called black box problem, the reliability of self-driving cars, and more.
INTERNET PIONEER
KRISHAN SABNANI, Homewood Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science, has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, a distinction that recognizes and honors those who have created or facilitated outstanding inventions that have had an impact on society.
A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Sabnani is a networking researcher who has made many seminal contributions to internet infrastructure design, protocol design, and wireless networks. His groundbreaking work helped shape both the internet and cellular networks, substantially reducing network infrastructure costs.
His breakthrough discovery in internet redesign was to separate control functions and complex software from the forwarding portions on internet routers. He was also the first to develop a systematic approach to conformance testing, allowing communications systems to work together and reducing test time from weeks to a few hours.
EARLY PROMISE
Two Whiting School assistant professors received National Science Foundation Early CAREER Awards, which recognize early stage scholars with high levels of promise and excellence.
YAYUAN LIU, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, received funding for her project: “Electrochemically Mediated Carbon Dioxide Separation via Non-Aqueous Proton-coupled Electron Transfer.”
JEREMIAS SULAM, Biomedical Engineering, received funding for his project: “Interpretable and Robust Machine Learning Models: Analysis and Algorithms.”