RIT Professor Earns Technology Transfer Award for Color Science Research

Center for Electronic Imaging Systems administers first annual award

Rochester Institute of Technology scientist Mark Fairchild was recognized by the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems (CEIS) with a Technology Transfer Award for the impact of his color-science research on the New York economy. The award ceremony was held Feb. 4 in Rochester.

Fairchild is the director of RIT’s Munsell Color Science Laboratory in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and the Xerox Professor of Color Science. His yearlong collaboration with Xerox Inc. helped to improve the company’s color-imaging technology. The New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research funded the project at the Center for Advanced Technology in Electronic Systems (CAT-EIS) through CEIS. Fairchild’s research with Xerox resulted in significant economic impact during the last CEIS fiscal year.

“It is rewarding to see openly published university research have a meaningful impact on the practical day-to-day operations of a local corporation,” Fairchild says. “CEIS has provided a unique opportunity for our graduate students to work closely with industrial scientists to advance the quality of color imaging systems and our fundamental understanding of color perception.”

Fairchild’s research focuses on solving scientific problems that will make for simple and reliable production and reproduction of color images. His work explores cross-media color reproduction and addresses several inter-related areas such as color-appearance modeling, image appearance, image preference, image perception, color measurement, image quality measurement, high-dynamic-range imaging, image rendering and video rendering.

Fairchild is the author of Color Appearance Models, published by Addison-Wesley.