ECE Research Seminar Series: Computational Imaging from Nanoscopic to Astronomical Scales

The Electrical and Computer Engineering department is excited to have Dr. Oliver Cossairt, Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Northwestern University, as our Seminar Guest Speaker on Computational Imaging from Nanoscopic to Astronomical Scales.

Abstract

Computational imaging and illumination is an interdisciplinary approach that fuses diverse fields such as optics, image processing, computer vision, and computer graphics and plays a central role in several modern imaging techniques. The core idea is that captured images are considered intermediaries to a final computed result rather than being a final product.

In his talk, Dr. Cossairt will provide an overview of computational imaging technologies under development by the NU Comp Photo Lab, covering many physical scales, from nanoscale to astronomically. First, he will introduce a Synthetic Aperture Visual Imaging (SAVI) technique to image at high resolution over remote sensing scales (e.g., 100m-10km). SAVI uses camera arrays coupled with coherent illumination to improve spatial resolution in long-distance images by a factor of ten and beyond, essentially providing telescopic resolution using commodity hardware. Next, he will introduce a novel structured light technique designed to operate at macroscopic scales (e.g., 1-10m) called Motion Contrast 3D scanning (MC3D). MC3D maximizes bandwidth and light source power to avoid performance trade-offs in structured light 3D acquisition. The technique allows 3D laser scanning resolution with single-shot speed, even in strong ambient illumination, significant inter-reflections, and highly reflective surfaces. Lastly, he will present research on coherent diffraction imaging and tomographic reconstruction at the nanoscale, with nanoscopic lensless X-ray imaging applications. He will conclude with a discussion and reflections on past, present, and future opportunities to bridge computational imaging approaches across a broad range of physical scales.

Speaker's Biography

Oliver Cossairt is an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Assistant Professor at Northwestern University. Before joining Northwestern, he developed several key advances in 3D Display technology while earning my master's at the MIT Media Lab and as an Optical Engineer at Actuality Systems, resulting in 8 patents. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for his thesis work on the theoretical limits of computational imaging. Prof. Cossairt is currently director of the Computational Photography Laboratory at Northwestern University (http://compphotolab.northwestern.edu), whose research consists of a diverse portfolio, ranging in topics from optics/photonics, computer graphics, computer vision, and image processing. He has written several high-impact publications, including ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, and IEEE Transaction on Image Processing, and received Best Paper (2011) and Honorable Mention (2014,2017) awards for publications at the IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography. He has given a keynote talk at the IEEE Computational Cameras and Displays Workshop (2013), as well as invited talks at many conferences, including AAAS (2015), COSI (2013,2015,2016), CLEO Europe (2015), ICIP (2015, 2016), IPAM Computational Photography (2015), and FRINGE (2013). He has co-organized several workshops, serves on 5 conference program committees annually, and is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging. In the Spring of 2016, He co-organized the International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP), held at Northwestern University. His research projects have garnered funding from numerous corporate sponsorships (Google, Rambus, Samsung, Omron, Oculus) and federal funding agencies (ONR, NIH, DOE, NSF CAREER Award, DARPA, IARPA).

Note: This seminar is open to everyone at Illinois Tech. For more information, please get in touch with Dr. Mahesh Krishnamurthy in ECE, IIT. Phone: 312.567.7232, Email: kmahesh@ece.iit.edu.