Zoltan Kato

I was born in Hungary. I graduated from Jozsef Attila University, Szeged, Hungary in 1990. I received the PhD degree from University of Nice, France in December 1994, doing my research at INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France. Since then, I've been a visiting research associate at the Computer Science Department of the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Hong Kong; an ERCIM postdoc fellow at CWI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and a visiting fellow at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore. Currently I'm with the Institute of Informatics, University of Szeged, Hungary, where I'm heading the Department of Image Processing and Computer Graphics.

I'm a Senior Member of IEEE, IEEE Signal Processing Society, and President of the Hungarian Association for Image Analysis and Pattern Recognition.

My research interest includes image segmentation, statistical image models, Markov random fields, color, texture, motion, combinatorial optimization, parameter estimation, variational and level set methods.

You can also consult and download my publications or see a partial list of citations at Scopus.

PhD Students:

• Gabor Katai-Urban (2011-)
• Csaba Molnar (2010-)
• Jozsef Nemeth (2009-2010)
• Csaba Domokos (2006-2010), PhD 2011 (Currently with Learning and Vision Research Group, National University of Singapore, Singapore).
• Peter Horvath (2004-2007), PhD 2007 (Currently with Light Microscopy Centre, ETH Zurich, Switzerland). Co-suprevised with Ian Jermyn and Josiane Zerubia from Ariana Group, INRIA - Sophia Antipolis.

Recent Editorial Activities, Conference Organization:

• Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing: 2003-2008
• Managing Editor of Acta Cybernetica: 2005-2009
• Program Co-Chair for International Conference on Signal-Image Technology and Internet Based Systems, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. December 15-18, 2010.
• Area Chair for IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, San Diego, California, USA. October 12-15, 2008.
• Area Chair for IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Cairo, Egypt. November 7-11, 2009.

Recent grants:

• National Office for Research and Technology - Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (NKTH-OTKA): Coherent attributes in the interpretation and perception of the visual world. Consortial project of SZTAKI, University of Pannonia, Pazmany Peter Catholic University, and the University of Szeged. Principal investigator for the University of Szeged (2010-2012).
• Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA): Estimation of Linear Shape Deformations and its Medical Applications. Principal investigator (2009-2011).
• Janos Bolyai Research Fellowship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2003-2006).
• Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA): Markovian Image Models and their Applications in Unsupervised Image Segmentation. Principal investigator (2004-2006).
• Hungarian Science and Technology Foundation (TET), Hungarian-French Cooperation (Balaton): Efficient Shape Priors for Color Textured Image Segmentation. Principal investigator (2005-2006). Partners: Josiane Zerubia, and Ian Jermyn from Ariana Group, INRIA - Sophia Antipolis.

I also spend some time with travel and photography which resulted in an online gallery of travel photographs that I invite you to visit.