Prof. Dr. Aleš Leonardis

Prof. Dr. Aleš Leonardis graduated from the University of Ljubljana in Electrical Engineering in 1985 and received his master’s degree in 1988. In 1993, he received his doctorate in computer and information science from the then Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. He has built a successful academic career with a great impact on the research communities in Slovenia and abroad. He has always shared his international standing and recognition with the University of Ljubljana. Throughout this time, he was very active as a teacher. He has taught 12 courses at different universities, mentoring a number of students, including 20 doctoral students. He has made an important contribution with his research into computer vision; his ability to think outside the box led him to a number of new findings, published in more than 315 bibliographic units, including more than 40 articles in the most prestigious publications in the field of computer vision. He established the Visual Cognitive Systems Laboratory at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science of the University of Ljubljana, and strongly integrated it into the international research community. For the past eight years, he has been conducting research at the University of Birmingham, while maintaining excellent relations with the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, where he still lectures and mentors doctoral students. The strong link between the two universities is demonstrated by the visits of young researchers at the University of Birmingham, as well as the jointly organised annual Visual Object Tracking challenge, which is the most important event in the field of visual tracking on a global scale.