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Air Commodore Emily Flynn (left), Chair of the Achievement Medal Panel, presenting the JJ Thomson Medal to Bovik (right). Photo Credit: Institution of Engineering and Technology

Professor Al Bovik was awarded the�� from the�� for pioneering the use of visual neuroscience to create systems that control the quality of much of the world’s streaming video, television and social media content.��

His inventions have transformed the way image and video quality is measured and managed across digital platforms used by billions of people worldwide.��

“Winning the JJ Thomson Medal is wonderful and thrilling,” Bovik said. “Thomson was an amazing mentor. Seven of his students went on to win Nobel Prizes. To me, this is most admirable, since I view myself primarily as an educator. Like any good educator, I have learned more from my students than they from I, a sentiment I am sure the great Thomson would agree with.”

J.J. Thomson was an English physicist who helped revolutionize the understanding of atomic structure through his discovery of the electron, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906.��

Bovik, professor of electrical and computer engineering, accepted the medal at the IET Achievement Awards Ceremony in London on October 16. The ceremony recognized pioneers in engineering and technology from all over the world for their innovations and contributions in artificial intelligence, manufacturing sustainability, digital media technology, renewable energy and space communications.

“We are proud to celebrate these outstanding individuals and their impact through our Achievement Awards. These awards recognise the engineers and technologists whose ideas, leadership and innovation are helping shape the future,” said IET President Sam Hubbard. “This year’s winners demonstrate the extraordinary impact engineering has on society and the here and now.”

Bovik said the work that has shaped his research career grew out of curiosity.��

“The work that my students and I have accomplished rose from our pure research interests, and it is almost serendipitous that it has had such an impact on people’s lives,” he said.��

That impact, he explained, can be measured in significant reduction of internet bandwidth consumption, more than 70% of which is occupied by pictures and videos. The savings improve efficiency and lessen the Internet’s impact on the global carbon footprint, whether it be on television, streaming, social media, photography or video.

The approach behind it all, Bovik said, was applying neuroscience-based models of the human visual brain to understand how humans perceive distortions and low visual quality media.��

“We are using AI methods to improve the quality and efficiency of the billions of user-generated videos that are uploaded and shared every day.”

At the��Colorado Laboratory for Image and Video Engineering at �鶹��ý, Bovik and his students are bridging disciplines to solve problems related to assessing and improving the appearances of human avatars in future headset-based visual communication, such as Meta glasses.��

“I hope our work will inspire other engineers and computer scientists to cross disciplines to expand their learning to solve problems that lie between different branches of science. In our case, this has required my students and I to become neuroscientists and psychophysicists as well as video engineers. These are where many of our most pressing problems lie.”