Aaron Bobick

Aaron Bobick, a distinguished leader in computer science, serves as Dean of the School of Engineering & Applied Science and James M. McKelvey Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, a position he has held since July 1, 2015. He earned his SB degrees in mathematics and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1981 and his PhD in cognitive science from MIT in 1987. Earlier in his career, Bobick was a faculty member at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he directed the DARPA-funded Video Surveillance and Monitoring (VSAM) Project and led the Dynamic Scene Analysis research group, contributing significantly to advancements in computer vision during his tenure there until 1999.

Prior to Washington University, Bobick was a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1999 to 2015, serving as the founding chair of the School of Interactive Computing and director of the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability (GVU) Center, an internationally renowned hub for research in computer vision, graphics, ubiquitous computing, and human-computer interaction. He played a key role in developing bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs in computational media, robotics, and human-centered computing. Bobick is a pioneer in action recognition using computer vision, with recent work extending to robot perception for effective human-robot collaboration. His seminal publications include "The Recognition of Human Movement Using Temporal Templates" with James W. Davis (2002), "Graphcut Textures: Image and Video Synthesis Using Graph Cuts" (2003), "The Representation and Recognition of Human Movement Using Temporal Templates" (1997), "Texture Optimization for Example-Based Synthesis" (2005), and "Recognition of Visual Activities and Interactions by Stochastic Parsing" with Yuri A. Ivanov (2002). He has chaired major conferences such as the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, served as senior area chair for international computer vision events, and founded several successful technology startups. Among his honors are election as an IEEE Fellow in 2014 and designation as an ACM Distinguished Scientist, underscoring his profound influence on the field of computer science.

Professional Email: afb@wustl.edu