February 6, 2004

Boise State Electrical Engineering Prof Receives $400,00 NSF Grant

Boise State University electrical engineering professor Elisa Barney Smith has received one of the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards. A five-year $400,000 NSF Faculty Early Career Development grant will aid her team’s work on mathematical models used by optical systems that recognize characters on printed pages and enable them to be converted to digital format. With national and university libraries moving into the age of digital libraries, millions of books, historical documents and ancient texts will eventually be searchable and easily available. However, scanning and accurately recognizing characters on printed documents that are faded or are second-generation photocopies is beyond the limits of currently used optical character recognition (OCR) systems. “We are looking at the fundamental theory behind OCR,” said Barney Smith. Statistically analyzing the mathematical models used to recognize faded and degraded characters will help improve recognition accuracy.  The models will “describe how an image changes” and analyze “variations in shapes, contrast and resolution,” she said. Barney Smith is the second Boise State scientist ever to receive an NSF Career grant, an award to faculty who are in tenure-track positions but have not yet attained tenure. -30- Contact Elisa Barney Smith College of Engineering 208 426-2214 Media contact Pat Pyke communications and marketing 208 426-1987 ppyke@boisestate.edu