The Imaging Science Bulletin |
Keep in touch and stay up to date with the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science (CIS)
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Welcome back to the Imaging Science Bulletin! As always, our students have been making us proud. From presenting their posters at the 2024 IEEE Western New York Image and Signal Processing Workshop to being featured in the RIT student spotlight, we have plenty to brag about.
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Winter seems to finally have arrived as I write this, the first snowfall has begun. It has been a relatively uneventful fall, with our new freshman class (and the Freshman Imaging Project) in full swing, while our 1st-year graduate students are paying their dues with Fourier Methods for Imaging. We are fresh off our third Industrial Associates event with the University of Rochester (October 24, 2024), with plans in the works for standing up our own RIT version of this industry outreach program. The Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science Faculty are batting well-above average when it comes to research proposals, so while an uneventful fall, I think that we are in store for exciting developments as 2025 nears!
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The Freshmen Imaging Project this year is focusing on an image analytical approach to assessing animal hide quality for use in high-end drumheads (yes, you read that right). This experiential learning experience for our budding imaging scientists, joined by motion picture first-year colleagues, again is faced with a challenging, practical problem to solve, using an end-to-end imaging system solution. I am genuinely curious to see what solution they will develop under the supervision of Drs. Karen Braun and Bob Kremens, both from Imaging Science, as well as Dr. Flip Phillips (Motion Picture Science). The plan is to showcase the outcome at Imagine RIT (April 26, 2025) - mark that date on your calendar!
We also firmly have established a tweak in our undergraduate curriculum, where Dr. Dimah Dera (AI/ML expert) is teaching a new sophomore course, Mathematical Methods for Imaging, towards preparing our students for Machine Learning for Image Analysis during their junior year. We are taking the shift towards machine learning in “all things imaging" seriously at both undergraduate and graduate levels, where Dr. Dera also is teaching a graduate elective machine learning course (reliable and explainable AI), coupled to offerings by Dr. Bartek Krawczyk in the Graduate Lab (Python programming) and an elective course focused on ML with streaming and biased data. Our two newest faculty colleagues already are making inroads via their teaching and research impacts in our program. Speaking of research…
The Center has been submitting a flurry of proposals in preparation for fiscal year 2026, or fall 2025, when we will welcome another class of inbound graduate students. Dr. Chip Bachmann is leading the pack with >10 pending proposals, with many >$1m in total requests. This is a team effort that requires an effort across the imaging spectrum to maintain our research footprint across and beyond RIT’s campus.
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Here are some numbers to digest for FY24:
$5.5m in research expenditures, across 72 active projects (the Center varies between $5.5-6m in expenditures and 70-90 active projects on an annual basis)
Aaron Gerace is the front-runner with his and Dr. Rehman Eon’s support of the NASA Landsat program, with ~$650,000 in combined expenditures.
The Center accounts for ~30% of College of Science research expenditures and ~13% of RIT expenditures (discounting NTID’s large annual federal award).
CIS consistently graduates ~15 PhD student year-on-year.
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These numbers are solid, but we cannot rest on our laurels. We have been stable (or one can call it flat?), which is both good and bad. The Imaging Science family has a significant impact on RIT research, but we are evaluating next growth opportunities. We will see some new hires as folks transition into retirement, with potentially computational imaging, quantum imaging, multi-view imaging, and detectors/hardware at the forefront of areas where we want to make an impact. This is exciting and at the same time, makes one stop in your tracks as you realize what the impact of our colleagues has been on the field. They have established this program as one to be reckoned with, delivering imaging scientists of high caliber to industry and academia. But time waits for no one… I will stop my philosophical pontification here and mention some immediate changes in our future.
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We hope to have a new faculty colleague in place by summer 2025. The search to replace retired Dr. Jeff Pelz was successful, we just need to finalize the contract details with our selected candidate, so stay tuned for more details in early-spring. We also are aggressively recruiting to both our undergraduate and graduate programs, first focusing on the undergraduates. Our program boasts 100% placement rates in mid-$80k starting salaries, so we firmly believe that we can double our program and still place our imaging scientists in industry and graduate programs. Several of us have been visiting local high schools, coupled with outreach via advertisements via hard-copy (see Mr. Jeff Harris, outgoing RIT Board of Trustees Chairman at our local Rochester Airport ad) and social media. We have seen an uptick in applications for next year, and I want to acknowledge the legwork by past directors (Drs. Dave Messinger and Susan Houde-Walter), Dr. Karen Braun (our Associate Director), our outreach specialist (Mrs. Jaclyn McKelvey), and others at the College of Science (Ms. Melanie Green) and RIT Marketing (Mrs. Cassandra Nickels). It takes a village, right!
I quietly celebrated my first year as Center Director on October 23. It has been an exciting and humbling year, where I learned a lot and realized that I have a lot to learn. I am grateful to be joined by a wonderful team of staff and faculty colleagues. We love this program and will do our utmost to contribute to its growth and help chart our path forward as the field of “imaging science” evolves. Always feel free to reach out - we need your help as alumni to preemptively identify trends in industry, so that we can train our students to be leaders out there, and in spreading the news about all things imaging. Wishing you a festive and restful Christmas season!
Cheers till next time.
Jan van Aardt
jan.van.aardt@rit.edu
585-475-4229
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Industrial Associates Symposium Fall 2024 |
In October, RIT Imaging Science participated in our third Industrial Associates Symposium, co-hosted with UR Institute of Optics. This collaborative event brought together an astounding 559 people!! Students and faculty from both institutions were able to meet industry leaders and foster new relationships.
It was an inspirational day that included student presentations, a student poster session, company introductions and, of course, updates from both the Center for Imaging Science and The Institute of Optics.
Our next symposium is set for April 5, 2025, be sure to mark your calendars!
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RIT Student Posters at Industrial Associates |
Thomas Dickinson - Automated 6DOF Satellite Pose Estimation From Resolved Ground-Based Imagery
Tahrir Siddiqui - Airborne LiDAR for Estimation of Forest Carbon Sequestration
Gong Chen - Structuring and Polishing of Glass Using Femtosecond Lasers
Akif Qadeer - Optical differentiation wavefront sensor powered by deep learning
Deepak Kandel - Recent Trends in Robust and Practical Lifelong / Incremental Learning
Mohammad Saif - Assessing Multiseason Table Beet Root Yield from Unmanned Aerial Systems
Khata Elphas - Improved Strategies to Enhance Calibration and Validation of Landsat Thermal Data and their Associated Higher-Level Products
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Faculty Spotlight:
Dr. Dimah Dera |
Dr. Dimah Dera, who specializes in robust and trustworthy modern machine learning (ML) solutions for real-world applications, is introducing her expertise to a group of local high schoolers this academic year. The students are working with Dr. Dera for three-hour sessions a week for eight weeks each semester.
Each session includes learning ML concepts paired with a hands-on experiment. The group will cover fundamental ML concepts, including sensor integration, clustering, classification, and regression. Each session will include interactive discussions and experimental learning of a specific ML concept, including programming examples that students will run in the lab. Students will also work on building the circuit and programming one key feature of a self-driving Arduino car in each session.
This capstone project will introduce students to the basics of ML, robotics, programming, and autonomous driving technology. Combining hardware and software elements, the project allows students to build, program, and test their autonomous vehicles using an Arduino educational robot kit.
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Student Spotlight:
Arianna Giguere and Jan Wasilewski |
Imaging Science PhD Candidates Arianna Giguere and Jan Wasilewski presented their research in just three minutes, in the 3-Minute Thesis Competition, on November 4, 2024 at RIT. The competition highlights the excellent research conducted by graduate students and challenges students to explain their complex and technical research in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.
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Jan Wasilewski presented "AI-Powered Crop Protection: Detecting Plant Diseases Before They Strike," and Arianna Giguere presented "Navigating Vision Loss: Driving Toward Recovery with VR." Congratulations to both, including a 2nd place win by Arianna!
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Several CIS students had the opportunity to participate in the 2024 IEEE Western New York Image and Signal Processing Workshop held at RIT in November.
Congratulations to Akib Mohammed Khan, Mason Wahlers, and Karla van Aardt on their poster presentations for the NSF CRII # 2401828 funded Projects, PI Dr. Dimah Dera: “Robust Bayesian Vision Transformer for Image Classification” and “Uncertainty Estimation for Robust SLAM Using Bayesian Deep Learning.”
And to Sagar Lekhak, PI Dr. Emmett Ientilucci, on his excellent poster presentation on "Integrating Uncertainty Measures in Neural Networks for Improved Landmine Detection"
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IEEE Western NY Image and Signal Processing Conference |
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Our students continue to receive praise for their work. Ph.D. student, Thomas (Will) Dickinson won best poster, Automated 6DOF Satellite Pose Estimation From Resolved Ground- Based Imagery, at the IEEE Western NY Image and Signal Processing Conference in November! Congratulations Will!!
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Alumni Spotlight:
1974 Class Reunion |
On October 18, The Center for Imaging Science had the joy of welcoming Ernie Dankert and friends, class of '74, to campus. Alumni enjoyed a visit with students and a tour of the Imaging Science and Photo Science departments!
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CIS seniors presented their capstone projects to the group and had the chance to talk about the department transformation over lunch.
Grace Kachmaryk: Radiative Transfer Modeling of Canopies and Salt Marsh Ecosystems
Parker Mei: Enabling Energy-Efficient Displays through Human Perception of Color
Mason Wahlers: Robust Vision Transformer for Image Analysis and Classification
Luke Spinosa: Birds vs Bots: Advancing Airspace Discrimination
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| The Center for Imaging Science visits the Bay Area in February to visit with alumni. More details to come.
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| The Industrial Associates Symposium at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center.
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Help us spread the word about Imaging Science! |
Our imaging science BS program is recruiting new students for the Fall 2025 academic year. Graduates have 100% job outcomes with an average starting salary of $86,000. Share your love of imaging science with the next generation and recommend our program. Applications to RIT are due on January 15, 2025
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