Fernando Pereira, a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a researcher at Instituto de Telecomunicações, was awarded the prestigious Leo L. Beranek Meritorious Service Award by the Signal Processing Society (SPS), a society under the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The professor received the award at a conference on signal processing held from 14th and 19th April, in Seoul, South Korea, for “exemplary service and leadership in the SPS”.

“This award represents the recognition of my work, service and leadership in the field of digital signal processing, by my colleagues around the world”, shares Fernando Pereira. With contributions to “projects, conferences, journals, standardisation bodies, juries and lectures”, among other activities within the scientific community, the researcher sees this nomination as a sign that “his peers have been attentive to the efforts made”.

His research has focussed on the representation of multimedia signals, particularly visual signals. “Given the growing importance of immersive applications, new types of visual modalities have gained importance, namely light field and point cloud”, explains Fernando Pereira. “These modalities offer users new functionalities at the price of a huge amount of data that needs to be compressed, i.e., represented efficiently, so that it can be used in real applications and therefore subject to restrictions on the number of resources available”, he adds.

The International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, at which Fernando Pereira was awarded, is focused on signal processing and its applications and offers a comprehensive technical program presenting all the latest developments in research and technology in the industry that attracts thousands of professionals annually.