Syed co-authored the paper with his advisors, Eli Saber, professor of electrical engineering, and David Messinger, director of the Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Laboratory in the Center for Imaging Science.
“My work involves teaching computers to understand images,” Syed says. “We want a computer to be able to look at an image and say, ‘That’s a road, that’s a building, and that’s a military compound.’ ”
Completely automated image analysis is Syed’s ultimate objective.
“Our more immediate goal is to reduce the burden of manual interpretation by developing tools that will help image analysts deal with the massive amount of satellite data that is being collected,” he says. “The paper I presented in Brazil helps solve a small piece of this big puzzle.”
Syed expects to graduate with his master’s and doctoral degrees from RIT’s Center for Imaging Science in May 2013. He looks forward to a career pursuing research in academia or industry.