Edward H. Adelson

Dr. Edward Adelson is the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Vision Science at MIT, in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Adelson focuses on topics in human perception, machine vision, and image processing, including mid-level vision, motion analysis, perceptual organization, perception of surfaces and materials, and image data compression. He is well-known for contributions to multiscale image representation, such as the Laplacian pyramid, as well as basic concepts in early vision such as steerable filters and motion energy models. Adelson introduced the plenoptic function, which is an idealized function used in computer vision and graphics to express the image of a scene from any possible viewing position at any viewing angle, and built the first plenoptic camera. In computer graphics, he has worked on the generation and perception of line drawings, and has produced some well-known illusions such as the Checker-Shadow Illusion and Animated Lightness Illusions. Adelman currently works on perceptual and computational aspects of material perception including the perception of gloss. He has recently developed a new elastomeric technology for tactile sensing, called GelSight, which converts touch to images, and which opens up new possibilities in sensing 3D microscale topography. Adelson has over 100 publications on topics in human vision, machine vision, computer graphics, neuroscience, and computational photography in journals including Journal of Vision, Nature, and Nature Neuroscience. Recognition for his work includes the Marquis Award, the Adolph Lomb Medal, the Rank Prize in Optoelectronices, and the Longuet-Higgins Award. Adelson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences in addition to his American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership.