Tom Huang has been accorded a second major honor in less than two months. Huang, full-time faculty member at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, has won the 2006 Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year Award from the Society for Imaging Science and Technology and the International Society for Optical Engineering.

The Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year was awarded to Huang for "contributions in the education, research, and practice of imaging science." The award goes on to say that Huang's "leadership and innovation in fields such as multi-dimensional systems theory, image and video compression, and multimodal signal processing have brought together diverse communities and given direction to a generation of imaging professionals."

Huang serves as Co-chair of the Human-Computer Intelligent Interaction research initiative at the Institute and is a leading researcher in the fields of signal processing and pattern recognition. In November he traveled to Tokyo to receive the Okawa Prize, given annually to only one scientist in the world, for "his pioneering and sustaining contributions" in those areas.

The Society for Imaging Science and Technology is an international non-profit organization whose goal is to keep members aware of the latest scientific and technological developments in the field of imaging. The International Society for Optical Engineering is a not-for-profit society that has become the largest international force for the exchange, collection and dissemination of knowledge in optics, photonics and imaging.