Maria Petrou

FREng Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, 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 a ...

( el, Μαρία Πέτρου; 17 May 1953 – 15 October 2012) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece 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 ...

-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. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

scientist who specialised in the fields of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

and

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

. She developed a number of novel

image recognition Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the human ...

techniques, taught at Surrey University and

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

, and was a prolific author of scientific articles.

Early life and education

Petrou was born in

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...

, 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 natural science that studies matter, its 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 which r ...

at the

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

, before travelling to the United Kingdom to study mathematics and

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

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

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

'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 programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may ...

ic intelligence. In 1988, she started work at the University of Surrey'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, 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 capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services, and ...

s. Technologies based on Petrou's work have had numerous applications in commerce, medicine and environmental imaging. She was also an amateur cartoonist, and once challenged her colleagues to construct a robot capable of

ironing Ironing is the use of a machine, usually a heated tool (an iron), to remove wrinkles and unwanted creases from fabric. The heating is commonly done to a temperature of 180–220 °Celsius (356-428 Fahrenheit), depending on the fabric. Ironing wor ...

clothes – a challenge that later developed into a

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

-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 abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

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 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