Stan Sclaroff, BU associate dean of the faculty in mathematical and computational sciences and a College of Arts & Sciences professor of computer science, has been named to the 2017 class of fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He was also elected as a 2016 fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR).

Each year, the IEEE elevates outstanding members to the position of fellow to reward an exceptional record of accomplishments in one of the IEEE fields of interest. The number of fellows cannot exceed one-tenth of one percent of the voting membership. This honor was conferred upon Sclaroff by the IEEE board of directors at the November 2016 meeting, for contributions to computer vision, image retrieval, and gesture analysis.

Sclaroff was elected a fellow of the IAPR at its December 2016 meeting. Every two years, the IAPR conveys this honor upon members to acknowledge their distinguished contributions to the field of pattern recognition and to IAPR activities. Sclaroff was recognized for contributions in tracking, human-gesture analysis, shape recognition, and video databases.

“I am honored to receive these recognitions—and humbled to be among such fine company,” says Sclaroff. “I could not do it without the collaborative community of BU students, postdocs, and faculty who are always inspiring, inventive, and energetic—resulting in new ideas and directions for research.”

Sclaroff served as associate editor-in-chief for the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence from 2013 to 2016. He and his coauthors also received a Best Paper Prize in 2008 at the IEEE Workshop on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition for Human Communicative Behavior Analysis.

At BU, Sclaroff is a member of the Image & Video Computing Group—part of the computer science department—which studies computer vision, machine learning, and human-computer interaction.

Sclaroff and his colleagues are developing computer algorithms that can learn to predict what comes next in a video of human activities. He is also working on a National Science Foundation–funded project with Margrit Betke, a CAS professor of computer science, to develop a math tutoring system that is responsive to students’ persistence.