The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Professor Mubarak Shah a Fellow for his significant contributions to human action recognition in video and for his leadership in promoting the undergraduate research experience.
Only 1 percent of ACM members hold this prestigious distinction, a peer-nominated honor that recognizes outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology.
Shah is a world-renowned pioneer of automated video analysis. His novel methods for detecting and tracking human behavior in videos were used in the first-ever fully automated, multiple-camera video surveillance and monitoring system at the Orlando Police Department.
He and his team introduced groundbreaking work in visual crowd analysis, using algorithms that can count hundreds of thousands of people in a crowd in minutes, predict crowd behavior, and track individuals in a crowd. This technology was used to count demonstrators calling for the independence of Catalonia from Spain in 2015 and 2016, and licensed by Saudi Arabian officials to monitor crowds during the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Shah is a UCF Trustee Chair Professor and founding director of the Center for Research in Computer Vision. He established the computer vision program at UCF and serves as project director for the NSF-funded REU in Computer Vision, the nation’s longest-running REU. He was honored as a Pegasus Professor in 2006, the highest award given at UCF.