Professor Al Bovik of Texas ECE has been selected to receive the 2019 Progress Medal from the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). The Progress Medal is the oldest and most prestigious honor in the field of photography, having been given annually since 1878. It is awarded in recognition of any invention, research, publication or other contribution which has resulted in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense.
Bovik’s work addresses some of the most important and difficult problems of the information age. Each day, his picture quality measurement tools allow hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide to enjoy perceptually optimized picture viewing experiences, whether by social sharing or video on demand, while significantly contributing to more efficient global bandwidth consumption. Previous recipients of the RPS Progress Medal include historical figures such as George Eastman (Founder of Kodak) and Edwin Land (Founder of Polaroid), modern luminaries Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Sir David Attenborough, and Steve Sasson, and five Nobel laureates.
Al will receive the Medal during the evening of Wednesday. November 13 at the Royal Society in London. The current RPS Patron is the Duchess of Cambridge, who became the Society's Patron on 25 June 2019, taking over from Her Majesty the Queen who had been patron since 1952. The Progress Medal also carries with it Honorary Fellowship of The Society (HonFRPS).
Prof. Bovik holds the Cockrell Family Endowed Regents Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is Director of the Laboratory for Image and Video Engineering (LIVE). Dr. Bovik received Television’s highest honor, an individual Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (The Television Academy) in October 2015, for his work on the development of video quality prediction models which have become standard tools in broadcast and post-production houses throughout the television industry. In 2018 he was awarded the prestigious IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing. He has published over 800 technical articles in these areas and holds several U.S. patents. His publications have been cited more than 75,000 times in the literature, his current H-index is over 100, and he is listed as a Highly-Cited Researcher by Thompson Reuters. His several books include the companion volumes The Essential Guides to Image and Video Processing (Academic Press, 2009).