Thomas Gardos

Thomas Gardos serves as Associate Professor of the Practice of Computing & Data Sciences and Director of the MS in Data Science Program in Boston University’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, a position he assumed in October 2023. Bringing over three decades of industry experience from Intel Corporation, where he advanced through research and engineering positions, Gardos most recently led a team focused on computer vision and computational photography. His work there involved developing deep learning applications and crafting algorithm specifications for ultra-low-power computer vision chips. Earlier at Intel, he headed the video compression technology algorithm team and represented the company in key standards organizations such as the ISO Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) and the ITU-T video experts group. Additionally, he sponsored academic research grants and acted as Intel’s Researcher-in-Residence at the MIT Media Lab. Before his current role, Gardos taught as an adjunct lecturer at Oregon State University, Portland State University, and Boston University’s Spark! program.

Gardos holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, specializing in Digital Signal and Image Processing, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with thesis from the University of Delaware. At Boston University, he instructs DS701: Tools for Data Science each fall semester and DS542: Deep Learning for Data Science. His scholarly contributions, primarily in the form of patents, include “Method of providing replay on demand for streaming digital multimedia” (US Patent 6,496,980, 2002), “Encoding video signals using local quantization levels” (US Patent 5,802,213, 1998), “RTP payload format for the 1998 version of ITU-T Rec. H.263 video (H.263+)” (1998), and “Flexible Burst Image Capture System” (US Patent App. 13/728,580, 2013). These works have collectively amassed over 1,200 citations according to Google Scholar, underscoring his impact in fields like video encoding, image processing, and multimedia systems.