Professor Ramani Duraiswami awarded USM Board of Regents Faculty Award

On April 15, 2016, Professor Ramani Duraiswami (also of UMIACS) will be presented with a University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Faculty Award for Scholarship, Research or Creative Activity. Each year, the UMD Board of Regents recognizes faculty in this category for their "exceptional scholarship or research that extend or deepen the bounds of knowledge or of creative activities that are recognized as innovations in the nominee’s discipline."

Professor Samir Khuller, Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair of Computer Science, and a faculty committee nominated Duraiswami for his creative work with Virtual Reality in sound.  Khuller cited the software and hardware that Duraiswami has developed, as well as the work that he has done on hearing, the human ears, computer audition and sound to make the virtual reality experience all the more real for users of this new and innovative technology. In his nomination letter, Khuller also mentioned that Oculus VR has licensed the software that Duraiswami’s company, Visisonics, has created.

Duraiswami and his company have been highlighted in many online publications, most recently in the Baltimore Business Journal, DCInno, and Engaget.

Duraiswami joined the Computer Science Department in 2004 and he directs research at the Perceptual Interfaces and Reality Laboratory (PIRL). His primary interests include computer audition, computer vision, machine learning, and scientific computing.  He joined the faculty in 2004 as an Assistant Professor after having been a Research Scientist as the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.  He earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1991, and his B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1985.