Sargur Srihari

Sargur Narasimhamurthy Srihari (7 May 1949 – 8 March 2022) was an Indian and American computer scientist and educator who made contributions to the field of pattern recognition. The principal impact of his work has been in handwritten address reading systems and in computer forensics. He was a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA.

Early life and education

Srihari received undergraduate degrees in Science and in Electrical Communication Engineering from the National College of Bangalore University and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore respectively. He received Master's and Doctoral degrees in Computer and Information Science from Ohio State University , Columbus. versions of which were deployed by the Internal Revenue Service, USPS, Australia Post and UK Royal Mail. His subsequent work led to the first handwriting verification and identification system known as CEDAR-FOX, which was granted a U.S. Patent in 2009.

Srihari had a leading role in establishing the international conferences on document analysis and recognition, frontiers of handwriting recognition and computational forensics. This work was cited in Daubert standard and Frye standard hearings in United States courts leading to the admission of handwriting evidence in those cases. This research work was later extended to shoe-print and fingerprint recognition as well. Srihari served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Identifying the needs of the Forensic Science Community which led to a highly influential report entitled "Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward" published in April 2009.

Personal life Srihari died from complications of glioblastoma on 8 March 2022, at the age of 72.

Awards Srihari became an IEEE Fellow in 1995 and an IAPR Fellow in 1996. He was the recipient of the Outstanding Achievements Award of IAPR/ICDAR for 2011.