USF Distinguished University Professor Sudeep Sarkar has been named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his contributions to the advancement of computer vision and gait biometrics. He is the chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and cofounder of the USF Institute for AI+X. Professor Sarkar is among 52 Distinguished Members selected by the ACM in 2023 for work that has advanced computing, fostered innovation across various fields and improved computer science education.
“The ACM Distinguished Members program recognizes both career achievement as well as participation in ACM,” said ACM President Yannis Ioannidis. “Many of these new 52 Distinguished Members have been selected for important technical achievements, while others have been chosen because of their service and/or work in computer science education, which lays the foundation for the future of our field. With the Distinguished Member designation, ACM also highlights how individual computing professionals maintain the health and growth of a global scientific society through membership and active engagement with their colleagues.”
Professor Sarkar’s artificial intelligence research focuses on computer vision, which involves inferring a scene’s content, geometry and motion from images and videos. He has made seminal contributions to perceptual organization and grouping in computer vision, including introducing Bayesian networks, graph spectral methods, and supervised machine learning. His biometrics research focuses on gait recognition, which involves the recognition of someone from how they walk. His benchmark for gait recognition is a de facto standard in the field.
The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10 percent of the worldwide ACM membership based on professional experience and significant achievements in computing beyond the norm. To be nominated, a candidate must have at least 15 years of professional experience in the field and five years of Professional ACM Membership in the last 10 years, and must have achieved a significant level of accomplishment or made a significant impact in the field.