Maria Petrou

FREng Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK and from arou ...

(; 17 May 1953 – 15 October 2012) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

-born

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

scientist who specialised in the fields of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and

machine vision Machine vision is the technology and methods used to provide image, imaging-based automation, automatic inspection and analysis for such applications as automatic inspection, process control, and robot guidance, usually in industry. Machine vision ...

. She developed a number of novel

image recognition Computer vision tasks include methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g. in the form o ...

techniques, taught at

Surrey University The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its royal charter in 1966, along with a number of other institutions following recommendations in the Robbins Report. The institutio ...

and

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

, and was a prolific author of scientific articles.

Early life and education

Petrou was born in

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...

, Greece, in 1953, and displayed an aptitude for science from an early age. She began tutoring children in maths and science at the age of 15. She studied

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

at the

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki ( AUTh; ), often called the University of Thessaloniki, is the second oldest tertiary education institution in Greece. Named after the philosopher Aristotle, who was born in Stageira, about east of Thessa ...

, before travelling to the United Kingdom to study

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

and

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. In 1983, Petrou began working as a postdoctoral research assistant at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

's Department of Theoretical Physics.

Artificial intelligence research

As British academia gained a more practical focus in the 1980s, Petrou began to study

and other aspects of

robot A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, co ...

ic intelligence. In 1988, she started work at the

University of Surrey The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its Royal Charter, royal charter in 1966, along with a Plate glass university, number of other institutions following recommendations ...

's Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, becoming its Professor of Image Analysis in 1998. She later held the Chair of Signal Processing at

, and was the Director of the Informatics and Telematics Institute at Greece's Centre for Research and Technology (CERTH) from 2009 until her death. Petrou was furthermore elected a Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

, authored several books, and was a prolific contributor to scientific journals. During her career, Petrou developed a number of important image recognition techniques, including methods for robotic texture analysis, image comparison and 3D measurement. Most notably, she and Dr Alexander Kadyrov co-invented the trace transform, a method of image representation that allows for more efficient

facial recognition system A facial recognition system is a technology potentially capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a Film frame, video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verif ...

s. Technologies based on Petrou's work have had numerous applications in commerce, medicine and environmental imaging. She was also an amateur

cartoon A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently Animation, animated, in an realism (arts), unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or s ...

ist, and once challenged her colleagues to construct a robot capable of

ironing Ironing is the use of an iron (appliance), iron, usually heated, to remove wrinkles and unwanted creases from fabric. The heating is commonly done to a temperature of , depending on the fabric. Ironing works by loosening the bonds between the lon ...

clothes – a challenge that later developed into a

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

-funded robotics project.

Personal life

Petrou married Phil L. Palmer, a British astronomer, with whom she had one son before divorcing. She died of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

in October 2012, aged 59.

References

External links

Imperial College London webpage
(last updated 2009)
2006 British Machine Vision Association biography''Guardian'' obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Petrou, Maria 1953 births 2012 deaths Greek emigrants to England Scientists from Thessaloniki Greek computer scientists Greek women computer scientists British women computer scientists British computer scientists Academics of Imperial College London Academics of the University of Oxford Academics of the University of Surrey Aristotle University of Thessaloniki alumni British artificial intelligence researchers Deaths from cancer in Greece Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Female fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Alumni of the University of Cambridge Fellows of the International Association for Pattern Recognition 20th-century women engineers