Roy Davies

The title of 2005 BMVA Distinguished Fellow was awarded to Roy Davies, Professor of Machine Vision at Royal Holloway, London. Professor Davies has been a leading figure in the areas of image processing and computer vision since the mid-1980s and has contributed greatly to both the field and the community.

He was educated at Cardiff High School and Jesus College Oxford. He obtained his BA in Physics in 1963 and his DPhil in 1967. The title of his thesis was Electron and Nuclear Resonance Studies in Solids. Roy’s early career at RA level was based on spin transitions for nuclei and the related electronics, leading to the development of the ‘Davies Electron-Nuclear Double Resonance’ technique, better known as the ‘Davies ENDOR’ technique, a method that 32 years later is still regularly referenced in Physics journals. His interest in electronics, noise, and signal extraction or recovery led to a book which integrated the entire area. The book, Electronics, Noise and Signal Recovery, published in 1993, very neatly encapsulated the essence of the various courses taught by Professor Davies at Royal Holloway over the years.

The book for which Professor Davies is most well known to computer vision students, researchers, and academics all around the world is the one now in its 3^rd^ Edition: Machine Vision: Theory, Algorithms, Practicalities, originally published in 1990.

Professor Davies’ combined interest in image analysis and real-time systems has kept him in popular demand by industry for investigating industrial vision problems. Indeed, over a fair period of time a large proportion of his research funding has come from grants related to food inspection. This led to his third book in 2000, Image Processing for the Food Industry.

Overall, Professor Davies’ career has been involved with making sense of data, and not just images, and in part by negotiation of noise and clutter in a systematic way. His DSc awarded by the University of London in 1996 reflects this major preoccupation.

Professor Davies’ authority, popularity, and standing in the community are unbounded and this is reflected by the simple fact that he has examined around 100 PhD students. He has served the vision community through his tireless participation in the BMVA, the IEE, and on many editorial boards (Pattern Recognition Letters, Real-Time Imaging, etc) over the years.

The BMVA is privileged to add Professor Davies to its list of Distinguished Fellows.