Short Biography

 

Kirk Martinez is a Professor in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. He gained a BSc in Physics from the University of Reading and a PhD in Image Processing in the department of Electronic Systems Engineering at the University of Essex. Previously he was Arts-Computing Lecturer in University College London & Birkbeck College. He has been involved in nine European projects relating to tecnhology for Cultural Heritage. His research interests include content-based retrieval, the Semantic Web, image processing, Augmented Reality and Sensor Webs.

 

In the VASARI project he helped design the world's first high resolution colorimetric imager for paintings. In MARC he worked with the National Gallery and the Technical University of Munich on a camera which was eventually used to capture their entire collection directly for the first time. In Viseum a new system was designed to allow web browsers to view high resolution images (which became IIPimage). These projects led to the VIPS image processing library. ACOHIR expanded this to turntable images. Artiste made a system for retrieving art images based on their content and allowed cross-collection searching through web services. SCULPTEUR moved this forward to use ontologies and search 3D objects by similarity in shape. eCHASE expanded the technology for commercial use by picture libraries. Recent research also includes Glacsweb and SemsorGrid4Env on sensor webs for the environment as well as Internet of Things sensing.

His resaerch has been funded by the EU, EPSRC, NERC, National Geographic, Leverhulme and AHRC.

In terms of enterprise his research is being used regularly in image handling (VIPS, IIPimage), environmental monitoring (Glacsweb and mountainsensing.org) as well as RTIimaging systems built for major museums and humanities researchers.

 

Publications include a summary of his imaging research in Transactions of the IEEE, wireless sensor networks, future networks, image processing, multimedia, web conference, semantic web conference, electronic imaging conferences and various invited talks around the world.