| Meet the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mohit Gupta Professor of Computer Sciences |
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Research area Developing the next generation of computer vision systems, via research in two main areas: Designing novel computational cameras, and developing physics- and learning-based algorithms for scene interpretation. This work is motivated by applications in robotics, consumer and scientific imaging, and human-computer interfaces.
What excites you about your work?
“I’m excited about our work on multiple levels. I’m a computer scientist by training but have always been very interested in physics, and my work lets me blend elements from these seemingly different fields. I work with cameras, which capture light, and to build the best camera, you need to understand how light interacts with the world and then with cameras, which is really physics. What happens before an image is formed is physics, and what happens after an image is formed is computer science. I’ve spent the past 6-7 years looking at single photon cameras. The finest granularity of light is a photon; you can’t break light down any farther than that. It’s fascinating to be able to think about a device almost everybody uses and what can happen to it as you push them to the most fundamental and granular limit that physics allows.”
What do you hope to achieve?
“Seven or eight years ago, these devices were in the realm of science fiction. My mission has been to take this technology and try and bring it to a stage where it could be used by billions of people. That journey has been extremely rewarding, starting from a scientific curiosity and building this really exciting technology that could impact billions of lives. We are working closely with many collaborators and have gotten academic recognition and the support of WARF, government and industry. Beyond the academic recognition, this work has resulted in several patents with WARF and a company that was started a few years ago. There are still a lot of interesting challenges though, which will continue to spur research in the years to come. I hope that in five to ten years, we could get this technology to a stage where both my kids and parents could use it.”
Professor Gupta is an expert in computer vision. His work will revolutionize and enable great advancements with automation and safety.
– Michael Carey, WARF, Licensing Manager
Want to learn more?
Michael Carey, [email protected], 608.960.9867