A Cardiff University Professor specialising in computer vision has received China’s prestigious Friendship Award – the nation’s highest honour awarded to foreigners.
Professor Ralph Martin, who leads the Visual Computing Research Group, within the Cardiff School of Computer Science and Informatics, accepted his award from Ma Kai, Vice Premier of China, at a special ceremony held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
This is the highest level recognition awarded by the Chinese government to non-Chinese experts for their contributions to the country's economic and social progress. Professor Martin was one of 100 award winners from 25 countries, and was honoured for his outstanding academic contributions.
Professor Martin is also director for Scientific Programs for the Research Institute of Visual Computing (RIVIC), and his research interests are in the area of visual computing. This encompasses geometric modelling and processing of curves, surfaces, solids, and meshes, with applications to areas such as CAD/CAM, reverse engineering and sketch input of solid models. He is also interested in various topics in computer vision, image processing, and video processing, particularly where geometry is involved.
He was nominated for a Friendship Award by China’s top university for science and engineering – Tsinghua University in Beijing – where he is a Guest Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology.
‘I have been collaborating with Tsinghua since 2001 and this award is recognition of that long-standing and successful partnership,’ said Professor Martin.
‘Our work together has achieved some outstanding results over the years; both research groups here in Cardiff and at Tsinghua have gone from strength-to-strength, improving the quality of their research significantly to the point where both institutions are now undisputedly producing world-leading research. We have helped each other to get there.’
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