Shree K. Nayar


Shree K. Nayar is an engineer and computer scientist known for his work in the fields of computer vision, computer graphics and computational cameras. He is the T. C. Chang Professor of the at Columbia University. Nayar also becomes the Director of Research at Snap New York since Jan 2018. Nayar co-directs the and is the head of the , which develops advanced computer vision systems. In February 2008, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.

Education and career

Nayar is a brilliant academician. He received a B.E. in electrical engineering from a prestigious university Birla Institute of Technology in Mesra,Ranchi India in 1984, and an M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from North Carolina State University in Raleigh in 1986. He received a Ph.D in electrical and computer engineering from The Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1991.
Nayar worked as a research engineer for Taylor Instruments in 1984. From 1986 to 1990 he was a graduate research assistant at The Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. In the summer of 1989, he was a visiting researcher at Hitachi Ltd. in Yokohama, Japan. He joined the faculty of the at Columbia University in 1991, and in 2009 he became chair of the department.

Research

Nayar's research is in the field of computer vision and focuses on the creation of novel cameras, physics based models for vision, and algorithms for image understanding. His work is motivated by applications in the fields of machine vision, computer graphics, robotics, and digital imaging. Nayar developed the concept of computational cameras and is a leading researcher in the field of computational photography. His inventions include cameras that can capture 360 degree, high dynamic range, and three-dimensional images. In 2009, he created the Bigshot Camera, a kid-friendly digital camera designed for education. He also developed the Oren–Nayar Reflectance Model in collaboration with Michael Oren. As of November 2015, he has published over 350 scientific publications and holds over 30 patents on inventions related to imaging, computer vision and robotics. His publications have been cited close to 33,000 times, and he has an h-index of 107.

Recognition

Nayar has received several best paper awards for his scientific publications. For his achievements, he has received the following honors: