Al Bovik's research passions land at the nexus of visual neuroscience and digital pictures and videos, and how the capture, processing, transmission, and display of visual media can be perceptually optimized. He works with numerous technology companies throughout the television, social media, and cinematic industries including YouTube/Google, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Meta Platforms, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Ericsson, and many others. His neuroscience-based algorithms process most of the traffic passing over the internet, ensuring better bandwidth utilization and optimized visual quality for hundreds of millions of viewers every day. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and Academia Europaea. Along the way he received the John Fritz Medal, the IEEE Edison Medal, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award, the RPS Progress Medal, and the Edwin H. Land Medal.
keywords
Digital Video, Visual Neuroscience, Image Processing, Visual Perception, Augmented Reality, Streaming Video, Social Media, Image Quality, Video Quality
ECEN 4012 - Special Topics
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Fall 2025
Examines a special topic in Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering.
ECEN 5002 - Special Topics
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2025
Examines a special topic in Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. May be repeated for up to 9 total credit hours.
ECEN 5672 - Digital Image Processing
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Fall 2025
Provides a hands-on experience of image processing ranging from image formation, basic Fourier theory in multiple dimensions, machine learning theory as applied to image processing ranging from perceptions through transformers and LLM,s with applications, image denoising, image quality prediction, 3D-ranging by stereo, visual neuroscience of pictures and picture statistics. Homeworks are hands on applications of learned methods to real image processing tasks, and there is a semester-long project expected of each student or student team. Recommended prerequisite of ECEN 3810, Introduction to Probability Theory. Same as ECEN 4672.
ECEN 5772 - Digital Video
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2026
Provides modern theories and applications of processing and analyzing digital videos. The class covers the basic concepts of classic video processing, theories of visual neuroscience as they apply to creating video processing algorithms, and data-driven and deep learning based methods for processing and analyzing digital videos. Emphasis is on fusing these methods to solve real-world digital video processing problems that arise in modern streaming and social media systems. Recommended prerequisite: ECEN 4672/5672 Digital Image Processing and ECEN 5712 Machine Learning for Engineers.
