Venu Govindaraju, PhD - Vice President for Research and Economic Development, SUNY Distinguished Professor.

Govindaraju's contributions in the field of Document Analysis & Recognition (DAR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to drive innovations that impact the globe.

Venu Govindaraju.

photo credit: Buffalo News

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Excerpt from Buffalo News: “We called our technology ‘pattern recognition or image processing,’ because people were shying away from the term ‘AI,’ ” Govindaraju said. “But around 2010, people began looking back and saying, ‘This was and is AI'. ”

Venu Govindaraju, PhD - VP for Research & Economic Development, SUNY Distinguished Professor and pioneer of impactful artificial intelligence technologies with global reach.

At a time when the idea of practical artificial intelligence systems seemed more like science fiction than reality, Dr. Venu Govindaraju led a team of graduate students and research scientists who pioneered the world's first autonomous system capable of deciphering handwritten addresses. Operating at a remarkable speed of 13 postal mail pieces per second, the software system interpreted natural handwriting without the need for rigid guidelines, structured forms, or meticulously printed text. Initially funded by the U.S. Postal Service, it was subsequently adopted by the Australia Post and the UK Royal Mail. It was a transformative development that ultimately impacted the entire field of DAR. Today, the automated software system proficiently reads addresses on nearly all handwritten mail in the United States in real-time, resulting in billions of dollars in savings for the postal service and is widely regarded as one of the first success stories in artificial intelligence.

Algorithm Icon.

interactive and iterative A*-like algorithm

lexicon text recognition icon.

lexicon-driven and lexicon-free text recognition

Pre- and post-processing icon.

pre- and post-processing techniques

multilingual optical character recognition.

multilingual OCR and writer identification

Govindaraju's approach hinged on innovative algorithms that addressed the seemingly insurmountable challenge of determining the destination for each mail piece amidst a staggering array of nearly 170 million possible choices. The strategy was to leverage the contextual information derived from postal directories, thereby narrowing down the choices (classes) to a small set of possibilities based on dynamically generated lexicons. The intricacies of natural cursive writing, which often rendered individual characters illegible without additional context, were overcome through an interactive and iterative A*-like algorithm. He developed a stochastic recognizer, which uses continuous attributes of structural features so that writing styles can be clustered and distinguished. The success of these algorithms in the postal domain spawned a wide array of new research areas around topics from lexicon-driven and lexicon-free text recognition to pre- and post-processing techniques, multilingual OCR, and writer identification. His work catalyzed a significant shift from heuristic-driven approaches to principled methodologies across the entire document-analysis pipeline.

The impact of Govindaraju's research on DAR is far-reaching

The impact of Govindaraju's research on DAR is far-reaching. It extends beyond revolutionizing the postal service industry – and well into allied fields such as Digital Libraries, Multilingual OCR, and CAPTCHA work. From detecting early indicators of illness outbreaks by processing healthcare forms for the New York State (NYS) Department of Health and enhancing patient safety through automated reading of faxed medical prescriptions, to enabling efficient access of historical documents (especially Sanskrit and Arabic) and retrieval of lecture videos segments with substantial use of white boards and handwritten content, Govindaraju’s techniques of word spotting, transcript mapping, text retrieval and writer identification have created powerful new methods to advance the technology in many applications.

Pioneering New Frontiers

Currently, Govindaraju is applying his expertise in handwriting recognition to the problems of Dysgraphia and Dyslexia among children facing challenges with communication and language impairment. As the Director and Principal Investigator of the $20M National Science Foundation-funded National AI Institute for Exceptional Education – with a mission of social good – he is developing AI tools for the early screening of children to identify their special needs and then giving the teachers AI-based intervention tools to efficiently help them overcome their limitations.

Learn More About Venu Govindaraju, PhD

Download Govindaraju's curriculum vitae to review his career achievements, explore his Wikipedia bio, or read the  USPS Case Study or details about the postal automation hightlights. For more information or questions please contact Research and Economic Development.

CASE STUDY

Pioneering AI Tech at USPS

Venu Govindaraju's work in handwriting recognition led to the development of the first system for interpreting handwritten addresses, saving the USPS hundreds of millions of dollars by automating processing and precise delivery of over 25 billion letters a year. Recognized for its success in machine learning, Govindaraju's team pioneered a system capable of interpreting natural handwriting at high speed, overcoming challenges with innovative algorithms.

Pieces of mail going down conveyor belt to be scanned and sorted.
Employee scanning a package on a conveyor belt.

CASE STUDY

Lockheed Martin Licenses AI Tech

Govindaraju was instrumental in architecting the first real-world AI success stories by deploying the HWAI system through Lockheed’s Remote Control Reader machines across mail processing centers. This revolutionized mail processing by automating address reading and reducing labor costs across centers that performed manual sorting. Initially deployed in 1997, it increased automated processing from less than 2% to 50% within two years. The technology's success led to licensing agreements with the UK's Royal Mail and Australia Post. Presently, the system reads addresses on the majority of U.S. mail, yielding billions in savings for the United States Postal Service. 

CASE STUDY

AI | Marianne Moore Digital Archive

In addition to his advancements in AI technologies for various industries, Venu Govindaraju demonstrates a unique ability to leverage AI for the humanities, as evidenced by his involvement in projects like the Marianne Moore Digital Archive.

Fountain pen on an antique handwritten letter.
Man filling out CAPTCHA on laptop.

CASE STUDY

AI | Creating a Barrier for Bots

Venu Govindaraju pioneered a systematic study of handwritten CAPTCHAs* leveraging the knowledge of common source of errors in automated handwriting recognition systems as well as the salient aspects of human reading to design secure CAPTCHAs for cyber security. The simultaneous interplay of several Gestalt laws of perception and the geon theory of pattern recognition (that implies object recognition occurs by components) allowed for the exploration of the parameters that truly separate human and machine abilities.

*CAPTCHA (Completely Automatic Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are automatic reverse Turing tests designed so that virtually all humans can pass the test, but state-of-the-art computer programs will fail. 

CASE STUDY

AI | LitGloss Digital Project

Venu Govindaraju's expertise extends beyond conventional applications, as seen in projects like LitGloss, where AI is employed to enhance literary analysis and understanding, showcasing his innovative approach to bridging technology and the humanities.

Blue background with abstract artificial intelligence.

Career Highlights:

  • 2023: Govindaraju awarded $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, which provides speech language pathologists with AI technologies to identify and assist children with speech acquisition challenges.
  • 2020: Govindaraju establishes the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (IAD).
  • 2015: Govindaraju is inducted into the National Academy of Inventors and receives ICDAR Outstanding Achievements, “For pioneering contributions to pattern recognition”
  • 2014: Govindaraju becomes Vice President of Research and Economic Development at the University at Buffalo. Eighteen years after patenting the handwriting recognition tech, more than 99% of letters/packages are automatically processed.
  • 2010: IEEE Technical Achievement Award - “For pioneering contributions to handwriting systems”
  • 2009: Fellow of ACM – Association of Computing Machinery
  • 2006: Fellow of IEEE – Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
  • 2003: Govindaraju founds the Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS), which focuses on integrating machine learning algorithms with sensors to improve tech spanning from civilian devices to prototypes for the Department of Defense.
  • 1996: Govindaraju earns a patent for his research in handwriting recognition and document processing that becomes core to automated mail delivery. His technology allowed USPS’ machines to automatically process/bar code nearly 25 billion handwritten pieces of mail a year.

Mentorship & Leadership:

Govindaraju has contributed significantly to the advancement of his fields by mentoring post-doctoral fellows and supervising dozens of graduate students. Upon graduation, the fellows and students have been employed globally in industry-leading companies and prestigious universities.

Govindaraju has been the primary advisor for 44 doctoral students and 17 masters students.

Their research has ranged from handwriting analysis and recognition to cybersecurity to statistical modeling for medical image segmentation. His students have worked on fingerprint detection, transfer learning for probability density estimation and language motivated approaches for human action recognition and spotting. His post-doctoral fellows have focused on Arabic handwriting recognition and fusion of classifiers in biometric systems.

Pupils raising hands during class elementary school.

National AI Institute for Exceptional Education

Govindaraju’s leadership as head principal investigator (PI) and director of the newly-established National AI Institute for Exceptional Education aims to close the educational gap – leveraging and developing AI as a primary tool – for the nearly 3.4 million U.S. children with speech and language processing challenges.  

The Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science

The Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (IAD), reporting to  Govindaraju as VPR, brings together researchers, labs, institutes, and centers of excellence at the University at Buffalo that are focused on advancements in AI, data science, computational science and related areas of research to tackle these complex problems.

Ciruit board and code rendering over a person typing on a omputer keyboard.
Secure fingerprint identification using biometric technologies.

The Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors

The Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS) was established by Govindaraju as founding director in October 2003 with the mission of advancing the science of biometric technologies for both civilian and homeland security applications by integrating pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms with sensors technology.

UB | AI is a two-year series exploring how UB faculty across disciplines are harnessing artificial intelligence for the public good. Launched on September 6, 2023, the series will discuss AI's role in advancing societal good in the realms of education, health care and the arts, among others.

Brice is joined by UB’s VP of Research & Economic Development, Venu Govindaraju, to discuss UB’s rich history with AI research, how UB is leading the way in AI development for good, and how AI will change education in the future.

Govindaraju explores a different perspective to biometric research. Addressing the challenges and advancing biometric technologies for civilian and homeland security.

I always wanted to become professor. Becoming a professor means you have to do research. I did that and I loved it.

My approach to good research is to recruit good, passionate students and give them the freedom to solve their own research problems.

Wanting to study in the U.S., UB offered me a great package as a grad student earning my PhD. I accepted it knowing only that Buffalo was near Niagara Falls.

Discover How UB is Breaking Barriers in AI

UB researchers are committed to using AI for social good, including developing new technology that addresses shortages of speech-language pathologists in K-12 education, online deepfakes, or improvements to medical imaging and more!