Biography

Prof. Ioannis A. Kakadiaris is an Eckhard Pfeiffer Professor of Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA. He also holds an adjunct position at the School of Health Information Sciences at the University of Texas, Health Sciences Center. He joined UH in August 1997 after a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ioannis earned his B.Sc. in physics at the University of Athens in Greece, his M.Sc. in computer science from Northeastern University and his Ph. D. at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the founder of the Computational Biomedicine Lab and this year directs the Methodist-University of Houston-Weill Cornell Medical College Institute for Biomedical Imaging Sciences (IBIS). His research interests include cardiovascular informatics, biomedical image analysis, biometrics, computer vision, and pattern recognition.

Dr. Kakadiaris is the recipient of a number of awards, including the NSF Early Career Development Award, Schlumberger Technical Foundation Award, UH Computer Science Research Excellence Award, UH Enron Teaching Excellence Award, and the James Muller Vulnerable Plague Young Investigator Price. His research has been featured on Discovery Channel, National Public Radio, KPRC NBC News, KTRH ABC News, and KHOU CBS News.

• Education
• Appointments
• Teaching
• Awards and Honors

Education

• Ptychion (B.S.) (1989), Physics, University of Athens, Greece
• M.Sc. (1991), Computer Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
• PhD (1997) Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

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Appointments

2008

Director, Methodist Hospital Research Institute-UH-Weill Cornell Medical College Institute for Biomedical Imaging Sciences (IBIS)

2007

Chairman of the Steering Committee, IBIS

2006 – present

Professor, Computer Science, ECE, and Biomedical Engineering, U. of Houston (UH)

2006 – present

Adjunct Professor, School of Health Information Sciences, University of Texas, Health Sciences Center

2005 – present

Director and Founder, Computational Biomedicine Lab, UH

2005 – present

Member, Southwest Center for Public Safety Technology Center

2003 – 2006

Associate Professor, Departments of Computer Science and ECE, UH

2003 – 2006

Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Health Informatics, University of Texas, Health Information Sciences

2003 – present

Member, Gulf Coast Consortia

2002 – present

Member, The W.M. Keck Center for Computational and Structural Biology

2002 – present

Director, Division of Bioimaging and Biocomputation, Institute for Digital Informatics and Analysis, UH

2000 – 2002

Interim Director, Virtual Environments Research Institute (VERI), UH

2000 – 2002

Thrust Leader, Bioimaging and Biocomputation, Virtual Environments Research Institute, UH

2000 – 2002

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Plastic Surgery, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

1999 – 2003

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Health Informatics, University of Texas, Health Information Sciences

1999 – present

Member, The Texas Learning and Computation Center, UH

1998 – 2000

Coordinator of External Relations, VERI, UH

1997 – 2005

Director and Founder, Visual Computing Lab, UH

1997 – 2003

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, UH

1996 – 1997

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania

1991 – 1996

Research Fellow, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania

1990 – 1991

Research Assistant, Biological Knowledge Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Northeastern University

1990

Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Northeastern University

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Teaching and Student Learning

Ph.D. Thesis Advisor of:
• Olga Avila-Montes (August 2008 - present)
• Dat Chu (June 2008 - present)
• Eleni Sgouritsa (January 2008 - present)
• Gerardo Mendizabal Ruiz (January 2008 - present)
• Michael Fang (January 2008 - present)
• Weilong Yang (September 2007 - present)
• Hakan Haberkar (June 2007 - present)
• Deepak Roy Chittajallu (May 2007 - present)
• Uday Kurkure (May 2002 - May 2008)
  Ph.D. Thesis: Computational Methods for Analysis of Non-Invasive Cardiac Imaging Data
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris (UH CS), R. Metcalfe (UH ME), C. Ordonez (UH CS), I. Pavlidis (UH CS) and S. Shah (UH CS)
• George Toderici (May 2003 - December 2007)
  Ph.D. Thesis: 3D-aided 2D Face Recognition
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris (UH CS), S. Cuvelier (College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University), Z. Deng (UH CS), C. Eick (UH CS), H.Q. Le (UH ECE), I. Pavlidis (UH CS)
  Current Position: Google, Inc.
• Alberto Santamaria-Pang (January 2003 - December 2007)
  Ph.D. Thesis: Morphological Reconstruction of Neurons from Optical Imaging
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris (UH CS), Costa M. Colbert (UH BB), Christoph Eick (UH CS), Yuriy Fofanov (UH CS), Peter Saggau (BCM, Neuroscience), and G. Zouridakis (UH CS)
  Current Position: Postdoc, CBL, UH.
• Sean O’Malley (May 2003 - May 2007)
  Ph.D. Thesis: Computational Methods for Contrast-Enhanced Intravascular Ultrasound Sequence Analysis
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris (UH CS), S.G. Carlier (Cardiovascular Research Foundation), M. Garbey (UH CS), S. Shah (UH CS), R. Vilalta (UH CS)
  Current Position: Google, Inc.
• Musodiq Bello (January 2003 - December 2007)
  Ph.D. Thesis: Statistical Modeling for Segmentation of Gene Expression Data in Mouse Brain Images
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, F. Fofanov (UH CS), J. Warren (RICE CS), R. Vilalta (UH CS), and G. Zouridakis (UH CS)
  Current Position: GE Research
• Alok N. Bandekar (May 2002 - December 2006)
  Ph.D. Thesis: A Unified Knowledge-based Segmentation Framework for Medical Images
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris (UH CS), N. Karayiannis (UH ECE), I. Pavlidis (UH CS), R. Vilalta (UH CS), and G. Zouridakis (UH CS)
  Current Position: Visigen, Inc.
• Amol Pednekar (January 1999 - December 2003) Ph.D. Thesis: Cardiac Image Analysis: Morphology, Function, and Dynamics
  Committee: C. Eick (UH CS), K. Grigoriadis (UH MECE), T. Gustavson (Chalmers), I.A. Kakadiaris, R. Muthupillai (Philips Medical), and G. Zouridakis (UH CS)
  Current Position: Clinical Scientist-South Zone, MR Marketing Department, Philips Medical Systems, Bothell, WA
• Carlos Barron (October 1998 - December 2003)
  Ph.D. Thesis: Human Motion Tracking Using a Monocular Camera
  Committee: J. Aggarwal (UT-Austin), B. Chapman (UH CS), R. Glowinski (UH MATH), I.A. Kakadiaris, and J. Subhlok (UH CS)
  Current Posistion: Professor, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana (UAM), Mexico City, Mexico

M.Sc. Thesis Advisor of:
• Raja Yalamanchilli (January 2007 - present)
• Deepak Roy Chittajallu (September 2004 - May 2007)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Computational Tools for Computer-Aided Breast Reconstructive Surgery
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, K. Ravi-Chandar(UT Austin AE), Z. Deng (UH CS)
  Current Position: Ph.D. Student, University of Houston
• Mohammad Murtuza (September 2004 - August 2006)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Three-Dimensional Biometrics: Using data from the nose and/or the ear
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, S. Shah(UH CS), K. Grigoriadis (UH MECE)
  Current Position: Associate Scientist, PROS Revenue Management
• Steve Urban (June 2004 - August 2005)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Automatic Reconstruction of Dendrite Morphologies from Optical Sections of Living Fluorescently Labeled Neurons
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, R. Vilalta (UH CS), C. Colbert (UH BIOL)
  Current Position: Associate Scientist, PROS Revenue Management
• Joseph Liang (June 2004 - August 2005)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Eye Detection and Face Recognition: Comparison of Algorithms
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, J. Subhlok(UH CS), P. Markenscoff (UH ECE)
• Nikhil Vajramushti (January 2003 - May 2004)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Efficient 3D Object Retrieval Using Depth Images
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, I. Pavlidis (UH CS), M. Papadakis (UH MATH)
• Georgios Passalis (January 2003 - May 2004)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Three-dimensional Face Recognition
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, I. Pavlidis (UH CS), P. Markenscoff (UH ECE)
  Current Position: Ph.D. Student, Univ. of Athens
• Kristoffer Andersson (September 2001 - August 2002)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Interpolation of Volumetric Data for Volume Visualization
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, D.J. Kouri (UH CHEM), and J. Subhlok (UH CS)
• Eric Shafer (January 2001-December 2001)
  M.Sc. Thesis: A development Toolkit for OpenCV Using Microsoft DirectShow
  Committee: B. Chapman (UH CS), I.A. Kakadiaris, and E. Papadakis (UH MATH)
• Wolfram Herbert Volpi (September 2000 - May 2001)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Comparison of Interpolation Methods for Volume Rendering
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, E. Papadakis (UH MATH), and J. Subhlok (UH CS)
• Kaushik Nagabhushan (September 1999 - May 2000)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Object Tracking in Compressed Video Sequences
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, D. Sivakumar (UH CS), and J. Subhlok (UH CS)
• Shengchun Duan (January 1999-December 1999)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Implementation of a Motion Retargetting System
  Committee: K. Grigoriadis (UH MECE), I.A. Kakadiaris, and D. Sivakumar (UH CS)
• Xiangcai Zhu (January 1999-December 1999)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Visualization of DPPC Membrane Modules
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, R.B. Loftin (UH CS), and A.D.J. Haymet (UH CHEM)
• Jaekyong Park-Jeong (September 2000-May 2001)
  M.Sc. Thesis: Creating Animations for Chemical Engineering Teaching Modules
  Committee: I.A. Kakadiaris, M. Nikolaou (UH CHEM), and J. Subhlok (UH CS)

Honors Thesis Advisor of:
• Vanessa Zavaletta (June 2000 - May 2002)
  B.Sc. Thesis: Fuzzy Connectedness Segmentation: Performance Evaluation
  Committee: B. Chapman (UH CS), I.A. Kakadiaris, and E. Papadakis (UH MATH)
  Current Position: PhD Student at the Biomedical Engineering program at Mayo Clinic.

International Internship Advisor of:
• Olga Carolina Avila Montes (BioEngr. Dept., Antioquia School of Engineering, Colombia) (January 2007 - December 2007)
• Sefa Demirtas (July 2005 - September 2005)
  Current Position: Ph.D. Student, MIT
• Barry Walsh (July 2004 - June 2005)

Research Experience for Undergraduates Advisor of:
• Jason Browning (2007)
• Yuliya Borisova (2007)
• Celia Ayala (2006)
• Lam Tran (2006)
• Michael deLisi (2005) Current Position: Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering Department
• Yunliang Lu (2005)
• John Seblak (2005)
• Prathibha Nagarajan (2004) Current Position: National Instruments

Research Experience for High School Students Advisor of:
• Ngbede Ogah (Houston Science Club) (2007)
• Abby Corrington (Houston Science Club) (2006)
• Tatiana Fofanov (Academy of Science and Technology, College Park High School) (2006)

Student Awards
• Mr. Sean O’Malley was selected as Student Paper Contest Finalist at the ICASSP 2007 for the paper ”Image-based frame gating of IVUS pullbacks: a surrogate for ECG”.
• Mr. George Toderici won the Sigma Xi Graduate Student Poster Award, UH (2006)
• Mr. Uday Kurkure won the UH Computer Science Scholarship Award, UH (2006)
• Mr. Sean O’Malley won the Sigma Xi Graduate Student Poster Award, UH (2006)
• Mr. Sean O’Malley won the UH Computer Science Best Software Award (2005)
• Mr. Uday Kurkure won the Sigma Xi Graduate Student Poster Award, UH (2005)
• Mr. Musodiq Bello won the Sigma Xi Graduate Student Poster Award, UH (2004)
• Mr. Sean O’Malley won an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2004)
• Mr. Musodiq Bello won the UHCS NuView Scholarship (2004)
• Mr. Musodiq Bello won W. M. Keck Predoctoral Fellowships in Computational and Structural Biology (2003, 2004)
• Mr. Amol Pednekar won the Sigma Xi Graduate Student Research Achievement Award, UH (2003)
• Dr. Christian Uehara won W. M. Keck Predoctoral Fellowships in Computational and Structural Biology (2002-2004)
• Mr. Carlos Barron won the Sigma Xi Graduate Student Research Achievement Award, UH(2002)
• Mrs. Vanessa Zavaletta won a 2002 Senior Honors Thesis Award, Honor College, UH (2002)
• Mrs. Vanessa Zavaletta won a UH NSM Alumni Poster Award, UH (2002)
• Mr. Amol Pednekar won the Sigma Xi Poster Award, University of Houston, April, 2002.
• Mr. Amol Pednekar won the UH NSM Alumni Poster Award, UH (2002)
• Mr. Carlos Barron won the Exxon/Mobil Foundation Best PhD Student Award, UH Department of Computer Science (2001)
• Mr. Chris Harding won the Best Student Oral Presentation Award at the Soc. of Exploration Geophysists (SEG) / Calgary International Exposition and 70th Annual Meeting, Calgary, Canada (2000)

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Awards and Honors

• First Place, Face Recognition Vendor Test (3D Shape Category), 2007
• Eckhard Pfeiffer Distinguished Professor, Dept. Computer Science, U. of Houston, 2006
• Best Poster Award (1st Place), International Greek Biotechnology Forum
• Best Poster Award (1st Place), 2nd Hellenic Congress of Atherosclerosis
• Research Excellence Award, Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, 2003.
• UH Teaching Excellence Award, University of Houston, 2003.
• AEHA James E. Muller Vulnerable Plaque New Investigator Prize for Clinical Research, 2003.
• President, University of Houston Chapter of Sigma Xi (2002-2003)
• Keynote Speaker
  • 2008: 8th IEEE International Conference on BioInformatics and BioEngineering(BIBE)
  • 2008: 25th Annual Houston Conference on Biomedical Engineering Research, Houston Society for Engineering in Medicine and Biology
  • 2007: 6th Annual International Cardiology Congress, Athens, Greece
  • 2007: International Conference VipIMAGE - I ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Vision and Medical Image Processing, Porto, Portugal
  • November 16, 2006: 5th Annual International Cardiology Congress, Thessaloniki, Greece
  • February 9, 2006: 23rd Annual Houston Conference on Biomedical Engineering Research, Houston Society for Engineering in Medicine and Biology
  • October 8, 2004: 14th Annual Keck Center Research Conference, Houston, TX
  • November 29, 2002: XI International Conference on Computing
  • November 21, 2002: AMDO'02 - IAPR Second International Workshop on Articulated Motion and Deformable Objects
  • February 2, 2001: International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision, Prague, Czech Republic, 2001.
• IEEE Distinguished Visitor, 2002-2004.
• National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2000.
• Schlumberger Technical Foundation Award, Houston, TX, 1998-1999.
• Gerondelis Foundation Fellowship, Boston, MA, 1991-1992.
• Bodosakis Foundation Fellowship, Athens Greece, 1989-1991.
• Highest honors for top graduating student at the Department of Physics, University of Athens, Greece, 1989.

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