The USC Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI) was one of the first research organizations in the world dedicated to image processing. Image processing work began at USC in 1962, and the Institute was founded in 1972 by William K. Pratt and Harry C. Andrews with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). SIPI has graduated around 500 PhDs over the last 50 years. As part of the SIPI 50th Anniversary celebration program, the inaugural SIPI Distinguished Alumni Awards have been established to honor USC SIPI graduates who have made professional and technical contributions that bring extraordinary distinction to themselves, the Institute, and the University. The awards include three categories: junior, mid-career, and senior (with Ph.D. graduation years from 2012-22, 2002-11, and earlier than 2002, respectively), with distinctions in three sectors: academia, industry, and government.

SIPI Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients

Senior/Academia

Bhaskar Rao For sustained and pioneering contributions to signal processing research, leadership, and education
Georgios B. Giannakis For outstanding contributions to signal processing and communication technologies, applications, and mentorship

Senior/Industry

Ioannis Katsavounidis For outstanding contributions to objective video quality metrics and perceptual optimization of streaming videos

Senior/Government

Firouz Naderi For exceptional leadership of space exploration and science programs that have greatly expanded humankind's knowledge of the universe

Mid-career/Academia

Carlos Busso For contributions to speech and multimodal affective signal processing and their applications

Mid-career/Industry

Shan Liu For contributions to and leadership in multimedia technologies, standardization, and applications

Junior/Academia

Mi Zhang For contributions to mobile/edge computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, wireless networking, and distributed computing

Junior/Industry

Chao Yang For contributions to computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in research publications and in commercial products and services