headshotOliver (Ollie) Cossairt

I am an Assistant Professor in the EECS Department at Northwestern University. My research interests lie at the intersection of optics, computer vision, and computer graphics. Before  joining Northwestern, I spent one year (Oct. 2011 – Aug. 2012) as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Columbia University, under the supervision of Professor Prof. Shree Nayar. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University. In September 2011, I completed my dissertation on The Limits and Tradeoffs in Computational Imaging. From September 2006-2011, I was a doctoral candidate at Columbia University under the advisement Prof. Shree Nayar and Prof. Peter Belhumeur. I received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship from 2008-2011. From 2003-2006, I worked as an Optical and Software Engineer, managing a NIST ATP research initiative to develop next generation 3D displays for a Actuality Systems. In 2003, I recieved an M.S. from the MIT Media Lab, where I worked with the Spatial Imaging Group and wrote my thesis on View-Sequential 3D Displays.

 

Research Interests

My research is in the emerging field of computational imaging, which combines expertise in optics, image processing, computer vision, and computer graphics. I design, model and build systems that combine sensors, displays, and novel optical elements. These cameras have applications in medical, astronomical, and scientific imaging. I am building a new breed of cameras with increased functionality and performance. I believe that my research will impact the way cameras are built in coming decades, from low-end consumer cameras to high-end scientific instruments.

I am fascinated with the idea that cameras can be very finely tuned towards specific purposes, and that doing so can be an excellent way to capture specific visual information. We can place the camera at the center of a larger visual processing system whose purpose is to analyze and interpret visual information. As such, the camera cannot be designed without keeping the entire system in mind.

I am particularly interested in developing imaging and display systems that combine a creative use of optical devices and sensor technology to enable new functionality in cameras and displays. My research is focused in the following areas:

  • Computational Imaging for leveraging novel optical designs and image processing together to enable new capabilities in conventional cameras, such as extended depth-of-field, digital refocusing, super-resolution, and measuring high dimensional appearance.
  • Computer Vision for measuring depth or spectral characteristics that inform a higher-level understanding about a scene, such as geometry or material properties.
  • Computational Displays for displaying images with an unprecedented sense of realism by allowing viewers to observe the appearance of objects in a natural and intuitive manner.

Awards and Honors

  • NSF CAREER Award: “Coherent Computational Imaging: Micro Measurements in a Macro World,” 2/1/2015-1/31/2020.
  • Honorable Mention, “Digital Refocusing with Incoherent Holography”, ICCP 2014.
  • Best Paper Award, “Spectral Focal Sweep: Extended Depth of Field from Chromatic Aberrations”, ICCP 2011.
  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Sep. 2008 through Sep. 2011.

Service

  • Organizer: IEEE 2016 International Conference on Computational Photography.
  • Associate Editor: IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging, 2014-.
  • Posters and Demos Chair: IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, 2013-2015.
  • Program Organizer: CVPR Workshop for Computational Cameras and Displays, 2014-2015.
  • Program Organizer: Workshop on Computational Photography and Intelligent Cameras, 2015.
  • Program Organizer: ACCV Workshop on Image Restoration and Enhancement, 2014.
  • Review Panel: NSF SBIR/STTIR Phase 1: Photonic/Optical Systems, 2015.
  • Review Panel: NSF SBIR/STTIR Phase 1: Photonic/Optical Systems, 2013.
  • Program Committee: International Conference on Image Processing, 2015.
  • Program Committee: IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, 2013-2015.
  • Program Committee: IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2013-2016.
  • Program Committee: CVPR Workshop for Computational Cameras and Displays, 2012-2014.
  • Program Committee: Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV), 2014.
  • Program Committee: GCPR Workshop on Imaging New Modalities, 2013.
  • Program Committee: Asian Conference on Computer Vision, 2012.
  • Reviewer: SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH ASIA, Transactions on Graphics (TOG), NIPS,
  • EuroGraphics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR), Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV), Applied Optics, Optics Express.

Patents

Granted

  • W. Chun, O. Cossairt. “Data processing for three-dimensional displays”. US Patent 7,525,541, Dec. 2009.
  • G. Favalora, O. Cossairt. “Theta-parallax-only (TPO) Displays”. US Patent 7364300, Apr. 2008.
  • O. Cossairt, G. Favalora, M Thomas, and R. Dorval. “Optical systems for generating three-dimensional images” US Patent 7,283,308; Oct. 2007.
  • O. Cossairt, J. Napoli. “Radial multiview three-dimensional displays”. US Patent 7,277,226; Oct. 2007.

Pending

  • S.K. Nayar, O. Cossairt, C. Zhou, “Systems, Methods, and Media for Recording an Image Using and Optical Diffuser”, US Patent app. 2011091358, Jan 2011.
  • O. Cossairt. “Image Enhancement for Three-dimensional Displays”. US Patent app. 20070201133, Aug. 2007.
  • G. Favalora, W. Chun, O. Cossairt, R. Dorval, M. Halle, J. Napoli, M. Thomas. “Scanning Optical Devices and Systems” (pending). US Patent app. 20050285027, Dec. 2005.
  • O.Cossairt, G. Favalora. “Minimized-thickness Angular Scanner of Electromagnetic Radiation”. US Patent app. 20060244918, Nov. 2005.
  • O. Cossairt, M Thomas, RK Dorval. “Optical Acanning Assembly”. US Patent app. 20050270645, Jun. 2005
  • O. Cossairt, T.J. Purtell, and S.L. Hill. “Optically Enhanced Image Sequences”. US Patent app. 2006048984. May 2005.

Invited Talks

Computational Imaging and Illumination at Northwestern University
O. Cossairt
Rice University, Houston, Texas, February 2015.

Computational Imaging and Illumination at Northwestern University
O. Cossairt
Zeiss Corporation, Oberkochen, Switzerland, February 2015.

Computational Imaging and Illumination at Northwestern University
O. Cossairt
University of Zurich, Switzerland, February 2015.

Computational Imaging and Illumination at Northwestern University
O. Cossairt
College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ, November 2015.

Computational Imaging and Illumination at Northwestern University
O. Cossairt
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, PA, October 2015.

Video Compressive Sensing With On-Chip Programmable Subsampling
L. Spinoulas, K. He, O. Cossairt and A. K. Katsaggelos
Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, pp. 49-57, 2015
[PDF]

Robust 3D Acquisition with Motion Contrast 3D Scanning
N. Matsuda, O. Cossairt, M. Gupta
Imaging and Applied Optics 2015, OSA Technical Digest (online) (Optical Society of America, 2015)
[PDF]

Computational Imaging and Illumination at Northwestern University
O. Cossairt
Oculus Research Seminar, Redmund, WA, June 2015.

Computational Imaging and Illumination at Northwestern University
O. Cossairt
Microsoft Research Seminar, Redmund, WA, June 2015.

Computational Imaging and Illumination at Northwestern University
O. Cossairt
Argonne National Labs Integrated Imaging Seminar, Willowbrook, IL, June 2015.
[PDF]

MC3D: Motion Contrast 3D Scanning
O. Cossairt, N. Matsuda, and M. Gupta
European Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO ’15), Munich, Germany, June 2015.
[PDF]

MC3D: Motion Contrast 3D Scanning
O. Cossairt, N. Matsuda, and M. Gupta
Dagstuhl Seminar on Computational Imaging, Dagstuhl, Germany, May 2015.

MC3D: Motion Contrast 3D Scanning
O. Cossairt, N. Matsuda, and M. Gupta
OMRON Corporation, Kyoto, Japan, April 2015

MC3D: Motion Contrast 3D Scanning
O. Cossairt, N. Matsuda, and M. Gupta
IPAM Workshop on Computational Photography and Intelligent Cameras, UCLA, CA, Feb 2015.

Surface Shape Studies of the Art of Paul Gauguin
O. Cossairt, X. Huang, N. Matsuda, J. Tumblin, A. Katsaggelos, D. Kronkite, G. Bearman, H. Stratis, M. Broadway, M. Walton
AAAS Annual Conference, Feb 2015.

When Does Computational Imaging Improve Performance?
O. Cossairt
Integral Imaging Lecture Series, Purdue University, West Lafeyette IN, Sep 2014.

When Does Computational Imaging Improve Performance?
O. Cossairt
Futurewei Technologies, Santa Clara CA, Oct 2013.

When Does Computational Imaging Improve Performance?
O. Cossairt
Sarnoff Research Center, IEEE meeting chapter, Princeton NJ, Oct 2013.

When Does Computational Imaging Improve Performance?
O. Cossairt
CVPR Workshop on Computational Cameras and Displays, June 2013.

Performance Bounds for Computational Imaging
O. Cossairt, M. Gupta, K. Mitra, A. Veeraraghavan
Imaging and Applied Optics Technical Papers, OSA, 2013
[PDF]

Performance Limits for Computational Photography
O. Cossairt, K. Mitra, A. Veeraraghavan
International Workshop on Advanced Optical Imaging and Metrology, Springer, 2013
[PDF]

 

Teaching

Funding

  • “Towards Flexible Sheet Cameras”, Office of Naval Resrearch, with Shree Nayar, 2014.
  • “Development of Snapshot 3D Holographic Microscope for Live Cell Imaging”, Chicago Biomedical Consortium Catalyst Grant, Partnership with Scherer Lab at UofC, 2014.
  • “Enhanced Dynamic Range Proteomic Analysis: Phase II”, National Institutes of Health SBIR, sub-contract with Resonon Inc., 2014.
  • “Surface Shape Studies of Gauguin’s Monotypes: Accuracy and Suitability of Reflectance Transformation Imaging”, Northwestern University NU-ACCESS Exploratory Grant, 2014.
  • “Theoretical simulation and study of performance tradeoffs and bounds in computational diffractive sensors and imagers”, Rambus Inc. 2014.
  • “Coherent Reflectance Imaging (CRI): A new techniques for quantitative ultra wide-field surface shape metrology,” McCormick Catalyst Research Award, with Marc Walton of NU-ACCESS, 2014.
  • “Small Worlds Lab”, Department of Energy, Sub-contract with Agronne National Labs, 2014-2018.
  • “Multispectral Imaging and RGB Light Field Capture using ChromoFocal Plenoptic Cameras”, (PI) Oliver Cossairt, (Co-PI) Jack Tumblin, Samsung GRO 2013.
  • “Unrestricted Gift”, Omron Corporation, 2013-14.
  • NSF CAREER Award: “Coherent Computational Imaging: Micro Measurements in a Macro World,” 2/1/2015-1/31/2020.
  • “Theoretical Bounds on Imaging Through Scattering Media,” with A. Katsagellos and M. Walton, Office of Naval Research, 9/1/2015-8/31/18.
  • “Approaches to Fast Widefield X-ray Imaging,” NU-ACCESS Exploratory Grant, with A. Katsagellos and M. Walton, 9/1/2015-8/31/2016.