Srihari Named Fellow of Engineering Institute

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Sargur N. Srihari, Ph.D., professor of computer science at the University at Buffalo and director of the Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR) at UB, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world's largest professional engineering society.

Srihari was cited for his contributions to character recognition and document-understanding systems.

As director of CEDAR, Srihari supervises and conducts research in developing methodologies, algorithms, software and hardware with a focus on machines that can read.

Recognized internationally for its work in developing off-line handwriting recognition technology, CEDAR conducts research on one of the most difficult problems in artificial intelligence -- getting a computer to "read" handwriting and poor-quality machine printing.

The first center of excellence to be designated by the U.S. Postal Service and the only one dedicated to handwriting recognition, CEDAR receives an average of $3.5 million in funding from the service and other government agencies each year.

Machines that can read handwriting could revolutionize the processing of mail, as well as hold down the magnitude of future postal-rate hikes. According to the Postal Service, handwriting-recognition techniques could save between $230 million and $260 million annually in processing costs for letter mail. They also are expected to produce dramatic cost savings for businesses by automating many labor-intensive jobs, like verifying signatures on checks and reading completed tax forms.

A member of the UB computer science faculty since 1978, Srihari has authored more than 125 technical papers on the science and engineering of reading machines, artificial intelligence and pattern recognition. He has co-authored several U.S. patents, as well as a book on computer text recognition.

The Williamsville resident received bachelor's degrees in physics and mathematics from Bangalore University and a bachelor's degree in electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, also in Bangalore. He received master's and doctoral degrees in computer information science from Ohio State University.