Professor  Harry  Wechsler 

Department of Computer Science
George Mason University
Fairfax,  VA  22030
internet: wechsler@cs.gmu.edu
(703) 993-1530  (sec)
(703) 993-1533  (office)
(703) 993-1710  (FAX)

BIOSKETCH

Harry Wechsler received the Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine, in 1975. From 1976 to 1978 he was Assistant Professor and System Manager for the Advanced Automation Research Laboratory (AARL) in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University, during 1978-1980 he was Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, and in 1980 he became Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Since 1987 he has been Professor of Computer Science at George Mason University. His academic career also includes visiting Professorships at Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) (France), Kyoto University (Japan), Technion (Israel), the Center for Automation Research at The University of Maryland, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and University of Paris- Orsay (France), Commonwealth of Science and Industry Research Organization (CSIRO) (Australia), University of Geneve (Switzerland), Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing).

His research, in the field of intelligent systems, has been in the areas of PERCEPTION: Computer Vision (CV), Signal and Image Processing (SIP), MACHINE INTELLIGENCE: Neural Networks (NN) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Evolutionary Computation: Genetic Algorithms and Animats, and MULTIMEDIA and VIDEO PROCESSING: Large Image Data Bases, Forensics, and Document Processing. Recent work includes joint space/spatial-frequency/temporal representations (Gabor, wavelets, and Wigner), clustering and segmentation, motion analysis, Automatic Target Recognition (ATR), Face and Gesture Recognition, Contents - Based Information Retrieval (CBIR) and Video Processing, Animats using Perception-Control-Action-Learning (PCAL) and Evolutionary Computation (EC) strategies, and Active, Functional, and Selective Perception (AFSP) and Attention. Research on topics related to joint space/spatial-frequency image representations and object/target recognition has been supported by NSF (ECS8310057, EET8713563) and DARPA (F19628-85-C-0002// CX-7401-86 / CX-7916-87 / CX-9333-88 & #MDA 972-91-C-0004), while research on face recognition and multiframe video analysis has been supported by the FBI (A004765 & JFBI92063), ARL and ARPA (DAAL01-93-R-9286).

He has been a consultant for both government (NIH, NRL, MIT Lincoln Lab/DARPA, NASA) and private industry (Honeywell, Perkin Elmer, Procter & Gamble, SAIC, and 3M). He has also cooperated with the MAYO Clinic on biomedical image processing and computer tomography (CT). He has lectured extensively in US and abroad, was an invited guest lecturer for several NATO Advanced Study Institutes (ASIs) and Advanced Research Workshops (ARWs) on Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition and Robotics, and he has taught professional short-courses on Computer Vision, Neural Networks, and AI. He was Director for the NATO Advanced Study Institutes (ASI) on "Active Perception and Robot Vision" held in 1989, in Maratea, Italy, "Statistics and Neural Networks" held in 1993, in Les Arcs, France, and "Face Recognition: From Theory to Applications" held in 1997, in Stirling, UK. He served as Co-Chair for the 13th International Conference on Pattern Recognition held in Vienna, Austria, in 1996. Member of the program and organizing committees for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Int. Confs. on 'Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition', held in Zurich, Switzerland, 1995, Killington, VT, 1996, and Nara, Japan, 1998.

He authored over 150 scientific papers. His book "Computational Vision" was published by Academic Press in September 1990, and he is the editor of the book, "Neural Networks for Perception" (Vol 1 & 2), published by Academic Press in November 1991. He was elected IEEE Fellow, effective as of January 1, 1993, for contributions to joint spatial/spectral image representations and neural networks, and their theoretical integration and application to human and machine perception.

SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS

1) Jacobson, L., and H. Wechsler (1988), Joint Spatial/Spatial-Frequency Representations, Signal Processing, 14(1), 37-68.

2) Char, J.M., V. Cherkassky, H. Wechsler, and L. Zimmerman (1988), Distributed and Fault-Tolerant Computation for Retrieval Tasks Using Distributed Associative Memories, IEEE Trans. on Computers, 37(4), 484-490.

3) Wechsler, H., and L. Zimmerman (1988), 2D Invariant Object Recognition Using Distributed Associative Memory, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 10(6), 811-821.

4) Wechsler, H., and L. Zimmerman (1989), Distributed Associative Memory (DAM) for Bin Picking, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 11(8), 814-822.

5) Meer, P., S. Wang, and H. Wechsler (1989), Edge Detection by Associative Mapping, Pattern Recognition, 22(5), 491-504.

6) Reed, T., and H. Wechsler (1990), Segmentation of Textured Images and Gestalt Organization Using Spatial/Spatial-Frequency Representations, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 12(1), 1-12.

7) Polzleitner, W., and H. Wechsler (1990), Selective and Focused Invariant Recognition Using Distributed Associative Memories (DAMs), IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 12(8), 809-814.

8) Wechsler, H. (1990), COMPUTATIONAL VISION, Academic Press.

9) Reed, T., H. Wechsler, and M. Werman (1990), Texture Segmentation Using a Diffusion Region Growing Technique, Pattern Recognition, 23(9), 953-960.

10) Kamgar-Parsi, B., B. Kamgar-Parsi, and H. Wechsler (1990), Simultaneous Fitting of Several Planes to Point Sets Using Neural Networks, Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing, 52, 341-359.

11) Char, J.M., V. Cherkassky, and H. Wechsler (1991), Fault-Tolerant Database Using Distributed Associative Memories, Information Sciences, 53(1/2), 135-158.

12) Wechsler, H. (Ed.) (1991), NEURAL NETWORKS for PERCEPTION (Vol. 1 & 2), Academic Press.

13) V. Cherkassky, N. Vassilas, G. Brodt, and H. Wechsler (1992), Conventional and Associative Memory-Based Spelling Checkers, Int. Journal for Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 5(3), 223-237.

14) J. Bala and Harry Wechsler (1993), Shape Analysis Using Genetic Algorithms, Pattern Recognition Letters, 14(12), 965-973.

15) H. Wechsler (1993), A Perspective on Evolution and the Lamarckian Hypothesis Using Genetic Algorithms, Revue Internationale de Systemique , 7(5), 573-592.

16) D. X. Le, G. R. Thoma, and H. Wechsler (1994), Automated Page Orientation and Skew Angle Detection for Binary Document Images, Pattern Recognition, 27(10), 1325-1344.

17) J. Bala, K. DeJong, J. Huang, H. Vafaie, and H. Wechsler (1995), Hybrid Learning Using Genetic Algorithms and Decision Trees for Pattern Classification, 14th Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Montreal, Canada.

18) B. Takacs and H. Wechsler (1995), Face Location Using A Dynamic Model of Retinal Feature Extraction, 1st Int. Workshop on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, Zurich, Switzerland.

19) S. Gutta, J. Huang, I. Shah, D. Singh, B. Takacs, and H. Wechsler (1995), Benchmark Studies on Face Recognition Int. Workshop on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, Zurich, Switzerland.

20) D. X. Le, G. R. Thoma, and H. Wechsler (1995), Classification of Binary Document Images as Textual and Non-Textual Data Using Neural Networks, Machine Vision , 8, 289-304.

21) D. Le, G. R. Thoma, and H. Wechsler (1996), Automated Borders Detection and Adaptive Segmentation for Binary Document Images, 13th Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), Vienna, Austria.

22) B. Takacs and H. Wechsler (1996), Attention and Pattern Detection Using Sensory and Reactive Control Mechanisms, 13th Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), Vienna, Austria.

23) S. Gutta, J. Huang, B. Takacs, and H. Wechsler (1996), Face Recognition Using Ensembles of Networks, 13th Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), Vienna, Austria.

24) J. Bala and H. Wechsler (1996), Shape Analysis Using Multistrategy Learning, Pattern Recognition, 29(8) (to appear).

25) S. Gutta and H. Wechsler (1996), Face Recognition Using Hybrid Classifiers, Pattern Recognition, (to appear).

26) V. Concepcion and H. Wechsler (1996), Detection and Localization of Objects in Time-Varying Imagery Using Attention, Representation, and Memory Pyramids, Pattern Recognition (to appear).

27) J. Huang, S. Gutta, and H. Wechsler (1996), Detection of Human Faces Using Decision Trees, 2nd Int. Workshop on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, Killington, VT.

28) S. Gutta, J. Huang, H. Wechsler, and V. Chen (1997), Automatic Video-Based Person Authentication Using the RBF Network Surveillance and Authentication (VSA), 1st Int. Conf. on Audio - and Video - Based Biometric Person Authentication, Crans-Montana, Switzerland.

29) J. Bala, K. DeJong, J. Huang, H. Vafaie, and H. Wechsler (1996), Using Learning to Facilitate the Evolution of Features for Recognizing Visual Concepts, Evolutionary Computation , 4(3), 297-312.

30) S. Gutta and H. Wechsler (1997), Face Recognition Using Hybrid Classifiers, Pattern Recognition, 30(4), 539-553.

31) S. Gutta, I. Imam, and H. Wechsler (1997), Hand Gesture Recognition Using Ensembles of Radial Basis Functions (ERBFs) and Decision Trees (DTs), Int. Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence (to appear).

32) B. Takacs and H.Wechsler (1997), A Dynamic and Multiresolution Attention Model and Its Application to Facial Landmark Detection, Image Understanding (to appear).

33) S. Gutta and H. Wechsler (1998), Face Surveillance, 6th Int. Conf. on Computer Vision (ICCV), Mumbai (Bombay), India.