Narendra Ahuja received the B.E. degree with honors in electronics engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, in 1972, the M.E. degree with distinction in electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 1974, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park, USA, in 1979. From 1974 to 1975 he was Scientific Officer in the Department of Electronics, Government of India, New Delhi. From 1975 to 1979 he was at the Computer Vision Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park. Since 1979 he has been with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he is currently Donald Biggar Willet Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Beckman Institute, and the Coordinated Science Laboratory. His current research is focused on extraction and representation of spatial structure in images and video; integrated use of multiple image-based sources for scene representation and recognition; versatile sensors for computer vision; and applications including visual communication, image manipulation, and information retrieval.

He received the 1999 Emanuel R. Piore award of the IEEE, and the 1998 Technology Achievement Award of the International Society for Optical Engineering, and 2008 TA Stewart-Dyer/Frederick Harvey Trevithick Prize of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and 2008 Open Innovation Research Award from Hewlett-Packard. He was selected as Associate for 1998-99 and 2006-07 and Beckman Associate for 1990-91 in the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study. He received Distinguished Alumnus Award from University of Maryland Department of Computer Science (2008), Best Paper Award from IEEE Transaction on Multimedia (2006), University Scholar Award (1985), Presidential Young Investigator Award (1984), National Scholarship (1967-72), and President’s Merit Award (1966). He has co-authored the books Pattern Models (Wiley, 1983), Motion and Structure from Image Sequences (Springer-Verlag, 1992), and Face and Gesture Recognition (Kluwer, 2001); and co-edited the book Advances in Image Understanding (IEEE Press, 1996). He is a fellow of IEEE, American Association for Artificial Intelligence, International Association for Pattern Recognition,Association for Computing Machinery, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and International Society for Optical Engineering. He is on the editorial boards of the journals IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence; Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing; Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision; Journal of Pattern Analysis and Applications; Int. Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology; Journal of Information Science and Technology; and IEE Japan Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering; and and a guest coeditor of the Artificial Intelligence Journal’s special issue on vision. He was the Founding Director of International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad where he continues to serve as Director International.