Professor Al Bovik (HonFRPS) holds the Cockrell Family Endowed Regents Chair in Engineering in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is Director of the Laboratory for Image and Video Engineering (LIVE). He is a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Wireless Networking and Communication Group (WNCG), and the Institute for Neuroscience. His research interests include digital television, digital photography, visual perception, social media, and image and video processing.
His work broadly focuses on creating new theories and algorithms that allow for the perceptually optimized streaming and sharing of visual media. The outcomes of his work have the benefits of ensuring the visual satisfaction of billions of viewers worldwide, while substantially reducing global bandwidth consumption.
He has published over 1,000 technical articles in these areas and holds several U.S. patents. His publications have been cited more than 150,000 times in the literature, his H-index is above 130, and he is listed as a Highly-Cited Researcher by The Web of Science Group. His several books include the The Handbook of Image and Video Processing (Academic Press, 2000, 2005), Modern Image Quality Assessment (2006), and the companion volumes The Essential Guides to Image and Video Processing (Academic Press, 2009).
Dr. Bovik has received a number of major international awards. These include:
- Prof. Bovik is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering "for contributions to the development of tools for image and video quality assessment." He is also an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the Academia Europea.
- The 2022 IEEE Edison Medal "for pioneering high-impact scientific and engineering contributions leading to the perceptually optimized global streaming and sharing of visual media.” The Edison Medal is given "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering, or the electrical arts." It is the oldest and most prestigious medal in this field of engineering, having been presented since 1909.
- A 2022 BaM ("Bammy") Award® from the International Trade Association for Broadcast and Media (IABM) for "perceptual picture and video quality algorithms for streaming and social media."
- A Technology and Engineering Emmy® Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2021 for the "development of perceptual metrics for video encoding optimization." This award, which is Television’s highest honor, is only bestowed upon an individual, company or organization for developments in engineering that are either “so extensive an improvement on existing methods, or so innovative in nature, that they materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television.”
- The Progress Medal from the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in 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." The Progress Medal is the oldest and most prestigious honor in the field of photography, having been given annually since 1878. Professor Bovik was also named Honorary Fellow of RPS (HonFRPS).
- The IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing in 2019 “For seminal contributions and high-impact innovations to the theory and application of perception-based image and video processing.” This Technical Field Award and medal is one of the highest honors accorded by the 423,000-member IEEE.
- 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.”
- A Primetime Emmy® 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 the development of video quality prediction models which have become standard tools in broadcast and post-production houses throughout the television industry. This award, which is Television’s highest honor, is only bestowed upon an individual, company or organization for developments in engineering that are either “so extensive an improvement on existing methods, or so innovative in nature, that they materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television.”
He has also received a number of other major awards from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, including the Norbert Wiener Society Award, ICIP Pioneer Award, the Sustained Impact Award, the Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award, the Carl Friedrich Gauss Education Award, and the Leo L. Beranek Meritorious Service Award. He has also received about 10 Best Journal Paper Awards from the IEEE and EURASIP.
He is an Honorary Member of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, received the SPIE Technology Achievement Award, and was named an IS&T/SPIE Imaging Scientist of the Year.
He is also a recipient of the Joe J. King Professional Engineering Achievement Award (2015) and the Hocott Award for Distinguished Engineering Research (2008), both from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (2008), and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000). He also received The University of Texas at Austin Career Research Excellence Award in 2020.
He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the Society of Photo-Optical and Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), and he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (HonFRPS). He is a member of both the Television Academy (ATAS) and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). He co-founded and was the longest-serving Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (1996-2002), and created and served as the first General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, held in Austin, Texas, in November, 1994. Dr. Bovik is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas (License # 114706) and is a frequent consultant to legal, industrial and academic institutions
