Panos P. Markopoulos, Ph.D.

Biography

Dr. Panos P. Markopoulos is an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering (EME) at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the founding director of the Machine Learning Optimization and Signal Processing (MILOS) Lab. He is also a core faculty of the RIT Center for Human-Aware Artificial Intelligence (CHAI). In the Summers of 2018, 2020, and 2021, Dr. Markopoulos was a Visiting Research Faculty at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Information Directorate. His research is in the areas of machine learning, data science, and adaptive signal processing, with a vision to advance efficient, explainable, and trustworthy artificial intelligence.

Together with students and collaborators, Dr. Markopoulos has co-authored more than 70 journal and conference articles, as well as 2 book chapters. Since 2016, his research has received external funding awards in the order of $2M (both as PI and Co-PI) from sponsors including the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the US National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency, the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). In October 2019, he received the Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award, from the AFOSR. In addition, Dr. Markopoulos has received multiple awards from the RIT Kate Gleason College of Engineering for exemplary performance in research and teaching. In 2021, Dr. Markopoulos was elevated to the grade of Senior Member of the IEEE.

Education

• Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, June 2015.

• M.S., Electronic and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Greece, August 2012.

• Engineering Diploma (5-year program), Electronic and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Greece, August 2010.

Professional Experience

• Associate Professor (tenured), Aug. 2021 - Present

Dept. of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Rochester, NY.

Concurrent roles at RIT

• • Director, Machine Learning Optimization & Signal Processing (MILOS) Lab, since 2015.

  • Core Faculty, RIT Center for Human-aware Artificial Intelligence (CHAI), since 2019.

  • Faculty, PhD Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), since 2020.

  • Faculty, PhD Program in Engineering, since 2015.

  • Extended Faculty, PhD Program in Computing and Information Sciences, since 2016.

  • Extended Faculty, PhD Program in Mathematical Modeling, since 2016.

  • Member, RIT Faculty Senate, since 2021.

• Assistant Professor, Aug. 2015 - Aug. 2021

Dept. of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY.

• Visiting Research Faculty (Summer), 2018, 2019, 2021.

U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Information Directorate, Rome, NY.

• Graduate Research Assistant, Aug. 2011 - May 2015

University at Buffalo (UB), The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY.

Research Expertise

Dr. Markopoulos's research is in the areas of machine learning, data science, and adaptuve signal processing, with a vision to advance efficient, explainable, and trustworthy artificial intelligence, in accordance with the strategic pillars of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative. In these areas, Dr. Markopoulos and his team focus on both theoretical (computational and statistical) foundations and on practical algorithmic solutions, evaluated in a wide range of real-world applications and data.

Current research topics

• Dynamic data subspace learning based on Lp-norm projections.

• Robust learning with limited, faulty, and adversarially corrupted data.

• Tensor methods for multi-way data analysis and processing.

• Tensor factorization methods for modeling efficient and explainable neural networks.

• Learning from multimodal data and deep learning fusion (recent topic).

• Continual learning with increasing parameter tensor ranks (recent topic).

Among other areas, his research has found important applications in remote sensing, computer vision, communication systems, and healthcare technology.

Selected Awards and Distinctions

• Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), 2020.

• Exemplary Performance in Research, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, RIT, 2019, for the research proposals submitted in 2018.

• Exemplary Performance in Teaching, Kate Gleason College of Engineering (KGCOE), RIT, 2019.

• Exemplary Performance in Research, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, RIT, 2018, for the research proposals submitted in 2017.

• Runner-up Poster Award, IEEE Western New York Image and Signal Processing Workshop, 2018, for the paper "Gait recognition based on tensor analysis of acceleration data from wearable sensors."

• Student Travel Grant Award, SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing, 2017, for the paper "Adaptive sparse-binary waveform design for all-spectrum channelization."

• Exemplary Reviewer, IEEE Communications Society, 2017. "For contributions made in furthering the objectives of the Society as Exemplary Reviewer of IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2016."

• Student Travel Grant Award, SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2014, for the paper "Direction finding with L1-norm subspaces."

• Best Paper Award in Physical Layer Communications and Signal Processing, IEEE/VTS/EURASIP International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems, 2013, for the paper "Some options for L1-subspace signal processing."

Professional Memberships

• Senior Member, IEEE (Computer, Signal Processing, Computational Intelligence, and Communication Societies).

• Member, SIAM.

• Member, SPIE.

• Member, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).