Thomas Shi Tao Huang

Thomas Shi-Tao Huang was a Chinese-born American computer scientist, electrical engineer, and writer. He was a researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Huang was one of the leading figures in computer vision, pattern recognition and human computer interaction. He made fundamental contributions to imaging and image processing, such as developing algorithms for image coding, restoration, compression, and super-resolution. He also worked on multidimensional digital filtering, digital holography, 3D motion analysis, multimodal human-computer interface, image video databases, and more. He published over 1,000 papers and held over 20 patents in his career. He also supervised over 100 doctoral students and collaborated with many researchers and industrial partners. He received numerous honors and awards for his achievements, including being a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the IEEE, the Optical Society of America, SPIE, and the International Association of Pattern Recognition. He also received the IEEE Signal Processing Society's Technical Achievement and Society Awards, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, and the Honda Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to Motion Analysis. He was also named a Swanlund Chair, the highest endowed title at UIUC. Huang was born on June 26, 1936, in Shanghai, Republic of China. In 1949, his family moved to Taiwan. Huang studied electronics at the National Taiwan University and received his bachelor's degree in 1956. Huang went on to the United States to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT he worked initially with Peter Elias, who was interested in information theory and image coding, and then with William F. Schreiber. He received his master's degree in 1960 and his doctorate in 1963 from MIT. Huang accepted a position on the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at MIT, and remained there from 1963 to 1973. He then became a professor of electrical engineering and director of the Information and Signal Processing Laboratory at Purdue University from 1973 to 1980. In 1980, he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he held various positions, such as the head of the Image Formation and Processing Group of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the co-chair of the Beckman Institute's research track on Human Computer Intelligent Interaction, and the first William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering. Huang was married to Margaret, who preceded him in death by three months. They married in 1959. Huang died peacefully in Indiana on April 25, 2020, at the age of 83. The couple had four children: Caroline, Greg, Tom and Marjorie.