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Dr. Ching Yee Suen, PhD

Professor, Computer Science and Software Engineering
Director, CENPARMI (Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence), Computer Science and Software Engineering


Dr. Ching Yee Suen, PhD
Office: S-EV 3105  
Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex,
1515 St. Catherine W.
Phone: (514) 848-2424 ext. 3006
Email: chingyee.suen@concordia.ca
Website(s): Ching Y. Suen

Research areas

  • Computational linguistics
  • Computer analysis and recognition of documents
  • Detection of fake coins
  • Design of license plates for automobiles
  • Human personality
  • Facial Beauty

Dr. Ching Y. Suen is the Founder and Co-Director of CENPARMI and the Concordia Honorary Chair on AI & Pattern Recognition. He received his Ph.D. degree from UBC Vancouver) and his Master's degree from the University of Hong Kong. He has served as the Chairman of the Department of Computer Science and as the Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science of Concordia University.


Prof. Suen has served at numerous national and international professional societies as President, Vice-President, Governor, and Director. He has given 45 invited/keynote and 300 regular papers at conferences and 200 invited talks at various industries and academic institutions around the world. He has been the Principal Investigator or Consultant of 30 industrial projects. His research projects have been funded by the ENCS Faculty and the Distinguished Chair Programs at Concordia University, FCAR (Quebec), NSERC (Canada), the National Networks of Centres of Excellence (Canada), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the industrial sectors in various countries, including Canada, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States.


Dr. Suen has published 5 conference proceedings, 16 books and more than 550 papers, and many of them have been widely cited while the ideas in others have been applied in practical environments involving handwriting recognition, thinning methodologies, font analysis and multiple classifiers. Dr. Suen is the recipient of numerous awards, including  IAPR 2020 King-Sun Fu Prize (highest honour in the field of Pattern Recognition), Elsevier Pattern Recognition Journal Award of Excellence (2016), Gold Medal from the University of Bari (Italy 2012), the IAPR ICDAR Award (2005), the ITAC/NSERC national award (1993), and the "Concordia Lifetime Research Achievement" and "Concordia Fellow" awards (2008 and 1998 respectively), and the "Teaching Excellence Award" given by the Concordia Council of Student Life in 1995.


Prof. Suen has supervised 120 doctoral and master's students to completion, and guided/hosted 100 long-term visiting scientists and professors. He is a fellow of the IEEE (since 1986), IAPR (1994), and the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada (1995). Currently, he is the Emeritus Editor-in-Chief of the journal of Pattern Recognition, an Adviser or Associate Editor of 5 other journals, and Editor of a new book series on Language Processing and Pattern Recognition. Actually he has held previous positions as Editor-in-Chief, or Associate Editor or Adviser of 5 other journals. He is not only the founder of four conferences: ICDAR, IWFHR/ICFHR, ICPRAI, and VI, but has also organized numerous international conferences including ICPR, ICDAR, ICFHR, ICPRAI, ICCPOL, and as Honorary Chair of numerous international conferences. In 1997, he created the IAPR ICDAR Awards, to honour both young and established outstanding researchers in the field of Document Analysis and Recognition.


He has always been fascinated by letters and characters, ever since he started his doctoral research on teaching the computer to read multi-font documents with a voice output for the blind.


Selected publications

C. Y. Suen and M. Komoda, "Legibility of digital type-fonts and comprehension in reading," in J. C. van Vliet (ed.), Text Processing and Document Manipulation, Cambridge University Press, 1986.

M. Cheriet, C. Y. Suen et al, Character Recognition Systems, Wiley Interscience, Hoboken, N.J., 2007, 326 pp.

X. X. Niu and C. Y. Suen, "A novel hybrid CNN-SVM classifier for recognizing handwritten digits," Pattern Recognition, vol. 45, 1318-1325, 2012.

Y. Li and C. Y. Suen, "Personalities of English fonts," Proc. DAS Int. Workshop
on Document Analysis Systems, Boston, May 2010.

C. Y. Suen et al, "Legibility of typefaces," Digest of ATypI Conference, Dublin, Ireland, Sept. 2010.

You could click here to find a copy of Professor Suen's list of editorial work and recent publications.

Click here for an exhaustive list of all the CENPARMI (archived) publications.

Google:   search for "Ching Y. Suen" to get info/publications

For More Information, you may visit the web page at: http://www.cenparmi.concordia.ca/

Editorial work and publications

For more detailed information, you may find some of the articles on the Internet. Recent publications can be found at: http://www.cenparmi.concordia.ca/

Authored and edited books

Mary Dyson and Ching Suen (eds.), Digital Fonts and Reading, with 14 chapters, in press, World Scientific Publishing Co.,Singapore-New Jersey-London, Feb. 2016, 250 pp.

M. Cheriet, N. Kharma, C.-L. Liu, and C.Y. Suen, Character Recognition Systems, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Sept. 2007.

C. Y. Suen and P. S. P. Wang (eds.), Thinning Methodologies, World Scientific, Singapore - New Jersey - Hong Kong - London, 1994, 344 pp.

C. Y. Suen and R. Shinghal (eds.), Operational Expert System Applications in Canada, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991, 200 pp.

C. Y. Suen (ed.), Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, CENPARMI, ConcordiaUniversity, April 1990, 211 pp.

C. Y. Suen, Computational Studies of the Most Frequent Chinese Words and Sounds, World Scientific, London-New Jersey - Singapore,1986, 350 pp.

Book chapters

Mrouj Almuhajri and Ching Y. Suen, "Legibility and readability of Arabic Fonts on Personal Digital Assistants",Digital Fonts and Reading, World Scientific Publishing Co.,Singapore-New Jersey-London, 2016.

Y. Lu, M. Yousefi, J. Ellenberger, R. H. Moore, D. B. Kopans,
A. Krzyzak, and C. Y. Suen, "3D Tomosynthesis to detect breast
cancer," in C. H. Chen (ed.), Handbook of Pattern Recognition and
Computer Vision, World Scientific, London-Singapore-New Jersey,
2016, pp. 371-393.

N. Nobile and C. Y. Suen, “Text segmentation for document recognition,”, D. Doermann and K. Tombre (eds.), Handbook of Document Image Analysis and Recognition, Springer, 2013.

P. J. Haghighi and C. Y. Suen, “Handwritten Farsi words recognition using Hidden Markov Models,” V. Margner and H. El-Abed (eds.), Guide to OCR for Arabic scripts, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2011, pp. 273-296.

C. L. He, L. Lam and C. Y. Suen, "Optimization of rejection parameters to enhance reliability in handwriting recognition," in C. H. Chen (ed.), Handbook of Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision, vol. 4. World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, Jan. 2010, pp. 377-396.

M. I. Shah and C. Y. Suen, "The present state and role of word spotting techniques in document analysis and retrieval - a comprehensive survey," in

C. H. Chen (ed.), Handbook of Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision, vol. 4. World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, Jan. 2010, pp. 353-376.

X. X. Niu, C. Y. Suen, and T. D. Bui, "Automatic cheque processing system," in P. S. P. Wang (ed.), Pattern Recognition and Machine Vision, River Publishers, Aalborg, 2010, pp. 293-318.

C. Y. Suen, Foreword for book, P. Wang (ed.), Pattern Recognition and Machine Vision, River Publishers, Aalborg, 2010, pp. xxv – xxvi.

Journal publications

W.-S. Zheng, C. Y. Suen et al, "Euler Clustering on Large-scale Dataset," in press, IEEE Tran. Big Data.

L. Liu, Y. Lu, and C. Y. Suen, "An Image-Based Approach to Detection of Fake Coins," IEEE Trans. Information Forensics and Security, Vol. 12, pp. 1227-1239,May 2017.

K. Luu, M. Savvides, T. D. Bui, and C. Y. Suen, "Compressed Submanifold Multifactor Analysis," IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), vol. 39, pp. 444-456, March 2017.

Y. Liu, Z. Yang, C. Y. Suen, and L. Yang. "A Study on performance improvement due to linear fusion in biometric authentication tasks," IEEE Trans. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, Vol. 46, pp. 1252-1264, Sept. 2016.

M. Ebrahimi, C. Y. Suen, and O. Ormandjieva, "Detecting predatory conversations in social media by deep Convolutional Neural Networks," Digital Investigation, Volume 18, Pages 33-49, Sept. 2016.

H. Li and C. Y. Suen, "Robust face recognition based on dynamic rank representation," Pattern Recognition, vol. 60, 13-24, 2016.

A. Fischer, C. Y. Suen, V. Frinken, K. Riesen, and H. Bunke, "Approximation of graph edit distance based on Hausdorff matching," Pattern Recognition, vol. 48, 331-343, 2015.

Ching Y. Suen et al (eds.), Neurocomputing, vol. 175, Part B, Jan. 2016. Special Issue: MCPR 2014 - Advances in pattern recognition methodologies and applications, has already received 52492 views and 9619 citations

L. Liu, Y. Lu, and C. Y. Suen, "Near duplicate document image matching - a graphical perspective," Pattern Recognition, vol. 47, 1653-1663, 2014.

K. Luu, M. Savvides, T. D. Bui, and C. Y. Suen, "Compressed Submanifold Multifactor Analysis", In press, IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

L. Li, Y. Lu, and C. Y. Suen, "Variable-length Signature for Near-duplicate Image Matching", IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol. 24, 1282-1296 , Dec. 2015.

Luyuan Li, Yongtao Wang, Ching Y. Suen, Zhi Tang, Dong Liu, "A tree conditional random field model for panel detectionin comic images", Pattern Recognition, vol. 47, 2139-2140, 2015.

Ching Y. Suen et al (eds.), Neurocomputing, vol. 175, Part B, Jan. 2016. Special Issue: MCPR 2014 - Advances in pattern recognition methodologies and applications, has already received 52492 views and 9619 citations.

M. Al-Khayat, L. Lam, and C. Y. Suen, “Learning-based word spotting system for Arabic handwritten documents,” Pattern Recognition. Accepted in March 2014.

Y. Liu, L. Yang, and C. Y. Suen, “The effect of coorelation and performances of base-experts on score fusion,” IEEE Trans. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Sept. 2013.

C. D. Wang, J. H. Lai, C. Y. Suen, and J. Y. Zhu, “Multi-Exemplar Affinity Propagation,” Journal of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. vol. 35, pp. 2223-2237, Sept. 2013.

M. Haji, T. D. Bui, and C. Y. Suen, “Removal of Noise Patterns in Handwritten Images Using Expectation Maximization and Fuzzy Inference Systems,” Journal of Pattern Recognition, vol. 45, Issue 12, pp. 4237-4249, December 2012.

G. Lian, J. Lai, C. Y. Suen and P. Chen, “Matching of Tracked Pedestrians across Disjoint Camera Views Using CI-DLBP,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 22, no. 7, pp. 1087-1099, July 2012.

X. Niu and C. Y. Suen, “A novel hybrid CNN-SVM classifier for recognizing handwritten digits,” Pattern Recognition. vol. 45, Issue 4, pp. 1318-1325, April 2012. Results surpass all 20 previous ones on MNIST database of 70,000 handwritten digits, setting a new record and breakthrough.

P. R. Cavalin, R. Sabourin, and C. Y. Suen, “Dynamic selection approaches for multiple classifier systems,” Neural Computing and Applications, vol. 22, Issue 3-4, pp. 673-688, March 2013.

K. Roy, P. Bhattacharya, and Ching Y. Suen, “Iris segmentation using game theory," Signal, Image and Video Processing, vol. 6, Issue 2, pp. 301-315, June 2012.

K. Roy, P. Bhattacharya, and Ching Y. Suen, “Iris segmentation using variational level set method," Optics and Lasers in Engineering, in press, doi:10.1016/j.optlaseng.2010.09.011.

Z. C. Li, J. Y. Chiang, and C. Y. Suen, “Face transformation with harmonic models by the Finite-volume method with Delaunay triangulation,” IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, and Cybern., 13 printed pages, DOI 10.1109/TSMCB2010.2042955.

X. Xie, J. Lai, C. Y. Suen, and W-S. Zheng, "Non-ideal class non-point light source quotient image for face relighting," in press, Signal Processing.

C.-L. He, C. Y. Suen et al, “Rejection measurement based on linear discriminant analysis for Document recognition,” Int. J. of Document Analysis and Recognition, vol. 14, 263-272, 2011.

X. H. Xie, J. H. Lai, and C. Y. Suen, "Normalization of face illumination based on large and small-scale features," IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol. 20, 1807-1821, 2011.

K. Roy, P. Bhattacharya, and C. Y. Suen, "Towards nonideal iris recognition based on level set method, genetic algorithms and adaptive asymmetrical SVMs," Engineering. Applications of AI, vo. 24, 458-475, 2011.

J. Sadri, C. Y. Suen and T. D. Bui, "Statistical characteristics of slant angles in handwritten numeral strings and effects of slant correction on segmentation," Int. J. Pattern Recognition & AI, vol. 24, 97-116, 2010.

M. Cheriet, ..., C. Y. Suen, "New frontiers in handwriting recognition,"Pattern Recognition, vol. 42, 3129, 2009. Editorial

C. L. Liu and C. Y. Suen, "A New Benchmark on the Recognition of Handwritten Bangla and Farsi Numeral Characters," Pattern Recognition, vol. 42, Issue 12, , pp. 3287-3295, December 2009.

P. R. Cavalin, R. Sabourin, C. Y. Suen and A. S. Britto, Jr., "Evaluation of Incremental Learning Algorithms for HMM in the Recognition of Alphanumeric Characters," Pattern Recognition, vol. 42, Issue 12, pp. 3241-3253, December 2009.

R. S. Ledley and C. Y. Suen (Editorial), "Celebrating 40 years of Pattern Recognition - Introductory Remarks,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 41, p. 2137, July 2008. CYS also edited 4 Invited Papers for the journal, and historical descriptions of the journal.

J. Rokita, A. Krzyzak and C. Y. Suen, "Multimodal biometrics by face and hand images taken by a cell phone camera," Int. J. Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 22, 411- 429, 2008. Once of the first research studies on bi-modal recognition of human faces and hands captured by cell phone camera.

J. Zhou, H. Peng and C.Y. Suen, "Data-driven decomposition for multi-class classification," vol. 41, 67-76, 2008.

W. Pan, T. D. Bui and C. Y. Suen, "Rotation invariant texture classification by ridgelet transform and frequency-orientation space decomposition," Signal Processing, vol. 88, 189-199, 2008.

P. Zhang, T. D. Bui and C. Y. Suen, "A novel cascade ensemble classifier system with a high recognition performance," Pattern Recognition, vol. 40, 3415-3429, 2007.

F. Lauer, C. Y. Suen and G. Bloch, "A trainable feature extractor for handwritten digit recognition," Pattern Recognition, vol. 40, 1816-1824, 2007.

J. Sadri, C. Y. Suen and T. D. Bui, "A genetic framework using contextual knowledge for segmentation and recognition of handwritten numeral strings," Pattern Recognition, vol. 40, 898-919, 2007.

Z. Yang, L. Yang, D. Qi and C. Y. Suen, "An EMD-based recognition method for Chinese fonts and styles," Pattern Recog. Letters, vol. 27, 1692-1701, 2006.

Y. Fataicha, M. Cheriet, J. Y. Nie and C. Y. Suen, "Retrieving poorly degraded OCR documents," Int. J. Document Analysis & Recognition, vol. 8, 15-26, 2006.

Journal publications

M. Al-Khayat, L. Lam, and C. Y. Suen, “Learning-based word spotting system for Arabic handwritten documents,” Pattern Recognition. Accepted in March 2014.

Y. Liu, L. Yang, and C. Y. Suen, “The effect of coorelation and performances of base-experts on score fusion,” IEEE Trans. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Sept. 2013.

C. D. Wang, J. H. Lai, C. Y. Suen, and J. Y. Zhu, “Multi-Exemplar Affinity Propagation,” Journal of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. vol. 35, pp. 2223-2237, Sept. 2013.

M. Haji, T. D. Bui, and C. Y. Suen, “Removal of Noise Patterns in Handwritten Images Using Expectation Maximization and Fuzzy Inference Systems,” Journal of Pattern Recognition, vol. 45, Issue 12, pp. 4237-4249, December 2012.

G. Lian, J. Lai, C. Y. Suen and P. Chen, “Matching of Tracked Pedestrians across Disjoint Camera Views Using CI-DLBP,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 22, no. 7, pp. 1087-1099, July 2012.

X. Niu and C. Y. Suen, “A novel hybrid CNN-SVM classifier for recognizing handwritten digits,” Pattern Recognition. vol. 45, Issue 4, pp. 1318-1325, April 2012. Results surpass all 20 previous ones on MNIST database of 70,000 handwritten digits, setting a new record and breakthrough.

P. R. Cavalin, R. Sabourin, and C. Y. Suen, “Dynamic selection approaches for multiple classifier systems,” Neural Computing and Applications, vol. 22, Issue 3-4, pp. 673-688, March 2013.

K. Roy, P. Bhattacharya, and Ching Y. Suen, “Iris segmentation using game theory," Signal, Image and Video Processing, vol. 6, Issue 2, pp. 301-315, June 2012.

K. Roy, P. Bhattacharya, and Ching Y. Suen, “Iris segmentation using variational level set method," Optics and Lasers in Engineering, in press, doi:10.1016/j.optlaseng.2010.09.011.

Z. C. Li, J. Y. Chiang, and C. Y. Suen, “Face transformation with harmonic models by the Finite-volume method with Delaunay triangulation,” IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, and Cybern., 13 printed pages, DOI 10.1109/TSMCB2010.2042955.

X. Xie, J. Lai, C. Y. Suen, and W-S. Zheng, "Non-ideal class non-point light source quotient image for face relighting," in press, Signal Processing.

C.-L. He, C. Y. Suen et al, “Rejection measurement based on linear discriminant analysis for Document recognition,” Int. J. of Document Analysis and Recognition, vol. 14, 263-272, 2011.

X. H. Xie, J. H. Lai, and C. Y. Suen, "Normalization of face illumination based on large and small-scale features," IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol. 20, 1807-1821, 2011.

K. Roy, P. Bhattacharya, and C. Y. Suen, "Towards nonideal iris recognition based on level set method, genetic algorithms and adaptive asymmetrical SVMs," Engineering. Applications of AI, vo. 24, 458-475, 2011.

J. Sadri, C. Y. Suen and T. D. Bui, "Statistical characteristics of slant angles in handwritten numeral strings and effects of slant correction on segmentation," Int. J. Pattern Recognition & AI, vol. 24, 97-116, 2010.

M. Cheriet, ..., C. Y. Suen, "New frontiers in handwriting recognition,"Pattern Recognition, vol. 42, 3129, 2009. Editorial

C. L. Liu and C. Y. Suen, "A New Benchmark on the Recognition of Handwritten Bangla and Farsi Numeral Characters," Pattern Recognition, vol. 42, Issue 12, , pp. 3287-3295, December 2009.

P. R. Cavalin, R. Sabourin, C. Y. Suen and A. S. Britto, Jr., "Evaluation of Incremental Learning Algorithms for HMM in the Recognition of Alphanumeric Characters," Pattern Recognition, vol. 42, Issue 12, pp. 3241-3253, December 2009.

R. S. Ledley and C. Y. Suen (Editorial), "Celebrating 40 years of Pattern Recognition - Introductory Remarks,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 41, p. 2137, July 2008. CYS also edited 4 Invited Papers for the journal, and historical descriptions of the journal.

J. Rokita, A. Krzyzak and C. Y. Suen, "Multimodal biometrics by face and hand images taken by a cell phone camera," Int. J. Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 22, 411- 429, 2008. Once of the first research studies on bi-modal recognition of human faces and hands captured by cell phone camera.

J. Zhou, H. Peng and C.Y. Suen, "Data-driven decomposition for multi-class classification," vol. 41, 67-76, 2008.

W. Pan, T. D. Bui and C. Y. Suen, "Rotation invariant texture classification by ridgelet transform and frequency-orientation space decomposition," Signal Processing, vol. 88, 189-199, 2008.

P. Zhang, T. D. Bui and C. Y. Suen, "A novel cascade ensemble classifier system with a high recognition performance," Pattern Recognition, vol. 40, 3415-3429, 2007.

F. Lauer, C. Y. Suen and G. Bloch, "A trainable feature extractor for handwritten digit recognition," Pattern Recognition, vol. 40, 1816-1824, 2007.

J. Sadri, C. Y. Suen and T. D. Bui, "A genetic framework using contextual knowledge for segmentation and recognition of handwritten numeral strings," Pattern Recognition, vol. 40, 898-919, 2007.

Z. Yang, L. Yang, D. Qi and C. Y. Suen, "An EMD-based recognition method for Chinese fonts and styles," Pattern Recog. Letters, vol. 27, 1692-1701, 2006.

Y. Fataicha, M. Cheriet, J. Y. Nie and C. Y. Suen, "Retrieving poorly degraded OCR documents," Int. J. Document Analysis & Recognition, vol. 8, 15-26, 2006.

Conference proceedings

N. El Gayar, F. Schwenker, and C. Y. Suen (eds.), Proc. 6th Int. Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition, Springer Verlag, Montreal, Oct. 2014, 290 pp.

R. Kasturi, D. Laurendeau and C. Y. Suen (eds.) Assoc Eds, Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Quebec City, August 2002, 3436 pp.

Refereed conference papers

Ali. K. Hmood, Tamarafinide V. Dittimi, and Ching Y. Suen, "Scale and Rotation Invariant Character Segmentation from Coins,"Proceedings 14th
Int. Conf. onImage Analysis and Recognition (ICIAR), pp. 153-162, Montreal, July 2017.

T. V. Dittimi, A. K. Hmood, C. Y. Suen, "Multi-class SVM basedgradient featurefor banknote recognition," Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on IndustrialTechnology (ICIT), pp. 1030-1035, Toronto, March 2017.

A. Sahlol, M. A. Elfattah, A. E. O. Hassanien, and Ching Y. Suen, "Particle swarm optimization with random forests for handwritten Arabic recognition system," Proc. Int. Conf. on Advanced Intelligent Systems and Informatics (AISI 2016), Cairo, Oct. 2016.

S. Khazaee, M. S. Rad, and C. Y. Suen, "Detection of counterfeit coins based on modeling and restoration of 3D images," Pre-Proc. CompIMAGE'16, Computational Modeling of Objects Presented in Images: Fundamentals, Methods, and Applications, p. 10, Niagara Falls, USA, Sept. 2016.

C. Y. Suen et al, "Innovative Forensic Studies Using Pattern Recognition Techniques," Proc. CSFS Conference, Can. Soc. of Forensic Sc., p. 56, 2016.

M. Ebrahimi, C. Y. Suen, O. Ormandjieva, and A. Krzyzak, "Recognizing Predatory Chat Documents using Semi-supervised Anomaly Detection," Proc. International Symposium on Electronic Imaging 2016 in the Document Recognition and Retrieval Conference, p. 41, Feb. 2016, San Francisco.

Z. Xu, H. Li, X. Jin, and C. Y. Suen, "Face recognition based on maximum sparse coefficients of object region",Proc. 2015 Chinese Intelligent Automation Conference, pp. 43-51,Fuzhou, June 2015

N. Sultan and C. Y. Suen, "Judging female facial beauty by computer", Invited paper, Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. on Computer Graphics and Animation, San Antonio, Texas, Sept. 2015.

K. Sun, P. Atighachian, B. Feng, S. B. Sinnott, and C. Y. Suen, "Detection of counterfeit coins based on lettering features",Proc. 28th Int. Conf. on Computer Applications in Engineering and Industry,San Diego, Oct. 2015. Best Paper Finalist Award

C. Y. Suen, Keynote Address, "Methods of achieving perfect scores in pattern recognition systems",3rd Asian Conf on Pattern Recognition (ACPR),Kuala Lumpur, Nov. 2015.

C. Y. Suen, "Methods of achieving perfect scores in pattern recognition systems," Keynote Address, 3rd Asian Conf on Pattern Recognition (ACPR), Kuala Lumpur, Nov. 2015.

B.-Y. Feng, M. Ren, X.-Y. Zhang, and C. Y. Suen, "Part-based high accuracy recognition of serial numbers in bank notes," in N. El Gayar, F. Schwenker, and C. Y. Suen (eds.), Proc. 6th Int. Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition, Springer Verlag, Montreal, Oct. 2014, pp. 204-215.

A. T. Jamal, N. Nobile, and C. Y. Suen, "End-shape recognition for Arabic handwritten text segmentation," in N. El Gayar, F. Schwenker, and C. Y. Suen (eds.), Proc. 6th Int. Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition, Springer Verlag, Montreal, Oct. 2014, , pp. 228-239.

H. Li, N. Nobile, and C. Y. Suen, "Face recognition based on Discriminative dictionary with multilevel feature fusion,"in N. El Gayar, F. Schwenker, and C. Y. Suen (eds.), Proc. 6th Int. Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition, Springer Verlag, Montreal, Oct. 2014, pp. 252-263.

A. T. Sahlol, C. Y. Suen, M. R. Elbasyoni, and A. A. Sallam, "Investigation of preprocessing techniques and novel features in recognition of handwritten Arabic characters,"in N. El Gayar, F. Schwenker, and C. Y. Suen (eds.), Proc. 6th Int. Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition, Springer Verlag, Montreal, Oct. 2014, pp. 264-276.

N. Nobile, M. Khayyat, L. Lam, and C. Y. Suen, "Novel handwritten words and documents databases of five middle eastern languages," Proc. Int. Conf. on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR), 152-157, Crete, Sept. 2014.

L. Liu, Y. Lu, and C. Y. Suen, "Novel global and local features for near-duplicate document image matching," Proc. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 4624-4629, Stockholm, Aug. 2014.

A. T. Jamal, N. Nobile, C. Y. Suen, “Learning-based Baseline Estimation,” Proceedings of Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, Russian Federation, Samara, September 2013, pp. 583-586.

L. Liu, Y. Lu, and C. Y. Suen, “Modeling local word spatial configurations for near duplicate document image retrieval,” Proceedings of The Twelfth International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, Washington D. C., U.S.A, August 2013, pp. 235-239.

A. Fischer, V. C. Kieu, M. Visani, and C. Y. Suen, “Generation of learning samples for historical handwriting recognition using image degradation,” Proceedings of The Twelfth International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, Washington D. C., U.S.A, August 2013.

A. Fischer, V. Frinken, H. Bunke, and C. Y. Suen, “Improving HMM-based keyword spotting with character language models,” Proceedings of The Twelfth International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, Washington D. C., U.S.A, August 2013, pp. 506-509.

M. Al Khayat, L. Lam, and C. Y. Suen, “Verification of hierarchical classifier results for handwritten Arabic word spotting,” Proceedings of The Twelfth International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, Washington D. C., U.S.A, August 2013, pp. 572-576.

B. Feng, M. Ren, and C. Y. Suen, “Extraction of serial numbers on bank notes,” Proceedings of The Twelfth International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, Washington D. C., U.S.A, August 2013, pp. 698-702.

D. Yu, and C. Y. Suen, “An improved classification system for handwriting-based interaction,” Proceedings of International Conference on Multimedia and Human Computer Interaction, Toronto, Canada, July 2013, pp. 121-127.

J. Janbi, M. Almuhajri, and C. Y. Suen, “Discovering legible digitized fonts for computer human interaction,” Proceedings of International Conference on Multimedia and Human Computer Interaction, Toronto, Canada, July 2013, pp. 131-138.

W. Wang, and C. Y. Suen, “A novel pattern rejection criterion based on multiple classifiers,” International Conference Multiple Classifier Systems, Nanjing, China, May 2013, pp. 331-342.

A. Fischer, C. Y. Suen, V. Frinken, K. Riesen, and H. Bunke, “A fast matching algorithm for graph-based handwriting recognition,” Ninth International Workshop on Graph-based Representations in Pattern Recognition, Vienna, Austria, May 2013, pp. 194-203.

K. Luu, M. Savvides, T. D. Bui, and C. Y. Suen, “Compressed submanifold multifactor analysis with adaptive factor structures,” International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Tsukuba, Japan, November 2012, pp. 2715-2718.

L. Liu, Y. Lu, and C. Y. Suen, “Document image matching using probablistic graphical models,” International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Tsukuba, Japan, November 2012, pp. 637-640.

C. Y. Suen, S. Nikfal, B. Zhang, and N. Dumont “Persona characteristics of fonts in English, Chinese, and Arabic,” ATypl Conference, Dublin, Ireland, October 2012.

M. Khayyat, L. Lam, C. Y. Suen et al, “Arabic handwritten text line extraction by applying an adaptive mask to morphological dilation,” Document Analysis Systems conf., Gold Coast, Australia, 2012.

F. J. Xu, K. Luu, C. Y. Suen et al, “Investigating age invariant face recognition based on periocular biometrics,” Prof. Int. Jt. Conf. on Biometrics, Oct. 2011. Best Poster Paper.

C. Y. Suen, N. Dumont et al, “Evaluation of fonts for digital publishing and display,” Proc. 11th Int. Conf. on Doc Analysis and Recognition, 1424-1436, Beijing, Sept. 2011. Invited Paper.

N. Nobile, C. Y. Suen et al, “Digit/symbol pruning and verification for offline Arabic handwritten Digit/symbol spotting,” ibid, pp. 648-652.

L. Liu, Y. Lu, and C. Y. Suen, “Retrieval of envelope images using graph matching,” ibid, pp. 99-103.

T. H. N. Le, C. Y. Suen et al, “ternary entropy-based binarization of degraded document images using morphological operators,” ibid, pp. 114-118.

B. Zhang, C. Y. Suen et al, “Discovering legible Chinese typefaces for reading digital documents,” ibid, pp. 962-966.

C. L. He and C. Y. Suen, "Error reduction based on error categorization in Arabic handwritten numeral recognition," Proc. Int. Conf. Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, 463-468, Kolkata, Nov. 2010.

M. I. Shah and C. Y. Suen, "Word spotting in gray scale handwritten Pashto documents," Ibid, pp. 136-141.

C. Y. Suen, “Legibility of Typefaces,” Proc. AtypI Conf., Dublin, Ireland, Sept. 2010. Invited Paper.

K. Roy, P. Bhattacharya, and C. Y. Suen, “Recognition of unideal iris images using region-based active contour model and game theory” IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing (ICIP’2010), pp. 1705-1708, Hong Kong, Sept. 2010.

K. Roy, C. Y. Suen, and P. Bhattacharya, “Segmentation of unideal iris images using game theory,” Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Istanbul, Turkey, Aug. 2010, p. 2844 – 2847.

X. Xie, W-S. Zheng, J. Lai, and C. Y. Suen, “Restoration of a frontal illuminated face image based on KPCA”, Ibid, pp. 2150 – 2153.

C. L. He, L. Lam, and C. Y. Suen, “Automatic discrimination between confusing classes with writing styles verification in Arabic handwritten numeral recognition,” Ibid, pp. 2045 – 2048.

M. W. Sagheer, C. L. He, N. Nobile, and C. Y. Suen, “Holistic Urdu handwritten word recognition using support vector machine,” Ibid, pp. 1900–1903.

M. W. Sagheer, N. Nobile, C. L. He, and C. Y. Suen, “A novel handwritten Urdu word spotting based on connected components analysis,” Ibid, pp. 2013-2016.

N. Wang, L. Lam, and C. Y. Suen, “Noise tolerant script identification of printed Oriental and English documents using a downgraded pixel density feature,” Ibid, pp. 2037 -2040.

H. Deng, G. Stathopoulos, and C. Y. Suen, “Applying error-correcting output coding to enhance convolutional neural network for target detection and pattern recognition,” Ibid, pp. 4291-4294.

C. Y. Suen and Y. Li, "Evaluation of the legibility of Chinese fonts for digital publishing," Proc. 23rd Int. Conf. on Computer Processing of Oriental Languages, p. 1, San Francisco Bay, July 2010. Keynote Paper

H. Alamri, C. L. He, and C. Y. Suen, "A new approach for segmentation and recognition of Arabic handwritten touching numeral pairs," Proc. 13th Int. Conf. on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, 165-172, Munster, Germany, Sept. 2009.

K. Luu, T. D. Bui, K. Ricanek Jr., C. Y. Suen, "Age estimation using active appearance models and support vector machine regression," Proceedings of the IEEE Third International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS 2009), pp. 314-318, Washington DC, U.S.A., September 2009

K. Luu, C. Y. Suen, T. D. Bui, K. Ricanek Jr., "Automatic child - face age - progression based on heritability factors of familial faces," Proceedings of The First IEEE International Conference on Biometrics, Identity and Security (Bids 2009), Florida, U.S.A., September 2009.

M. Haji, T. D. Bui and C. Y. Suen, "Simultaneous document margin removal and skew correction based on corner detection in projection profiles," in press, Proc. ICIAP (Int. Conf. on Image Analysis and Processing), Salerno, Italy, Sept. 2009.

S. Izadi, C. Y. Suen and N. Kharma, "Integration of contextual information in online handwriting representation," Ibid.

M. W. Sagheer, C. L. He, N. Nobile and C. Y. Suen, "A new large Urdu database for off-line handwriting recognition," Ibid.

H. Q. Deng, G. Stathopoulos and C. Y. Suen, "Error-correcting output coding for the convolutional neural network for optical character recognition," Proc. ICDAR, Barcelona, July 2009, p. 581-585.

C. L. He, L. Lam and C. Y. Suen, "A novel rejection measurement in handwritten numeral recognition based on modified linear discriminant analysis," Ibid, pp. 451-455.

W. Pan, T. D. Bui and C. Y. Suen, "Isolated handwritten Farsi numerals recognition using sparse and over-complete representations," Proc. ICDAR, Ibid.

P. Jifroodian Haghighi, N. Nobile, C. L. He and C. Y. Suen, "A new large-scale multi-purpose handwritten Farsi database," in press, Proc. ICIAR (Int. Conf. on Image Analysis and Recognition), Halifax, July 2009, pp. 278-286.

M. I. Shah and C. Y. Suen, "A handwritten Pashto database with multi-aspects for handwriting recognition," in press, Proc. 14th Conf. of the Int. Graphonomics Society, Dijon, France, Sept. 2009.

J. Dong, C. Y. Suen and A. Krzyzak, "Effective shrinkage of large multi-class linear SVM models for text categorization," Proc. ICPR, 4 pages, Tampa, Florida, Dec. 2008.

W. Pan, T. D. Bui and C. Y. Suen, "Text detection from scene images using sparse representation," Proc. ICPR, 5 pages, Tampa, Florida, Dec. 2008.

W. Ding, C. Y. Suen and A. Krzyzak, "A new courtesy amount recognition module of a check reading system," Proc. ICPR, 4 pages, Tampa, Florida, Dec. 2008.

C. Y. Suen, "Narrowing the gap between computers and humans in handwriting recognition," In press, Proc. Chinese conference on Pattern Recognition, Beijing, Dec. 2007. Keynote Paper.

C. Y. Suen, A. Zaryabi, C. Feng and Y. Mao, "A survey of techniques for face reconstruction," Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on SMC, pp. 3554-3560, Montreal, Oct. 2007. Invited Paper.

C. Y. Suen, A. Krzyzak and J. Rokita, "Face recognition from cell phone images," Int. Conf. on Image Analysis and Recognition, Montreal, Aug. 2007. Keynote Paper.

F. Solimanpour, J. Sadri and C. Y. Suen, "Standard databases for recognition of handwritten digits, numerical strings, legal amounts, letters and dates in Farsi language," Proc. Int. Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, pp. 3-7, Labaule - France, Oct. 2006.

C. Y. Suen, S. Izadi et al., "Farsi script recognition: a survey," Proc. SACH '06, Summit on Arabic and Chinese Handwriting, pp.101-110, College Park, Maryland, Sept. 2006, Invited Paper..

J. Sadri, C. Y. Suen and T. D. Bui, "A new clustering method for improving plasticity and stability in handwritten character recognition systems," Proc. 18th Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition, vol. 2, pp. 1130-1133, Hong Kong, Aug. 2006.

C. Y. Suen, "From humans to handwriting to computer and back," Proc. ICDAR, p. 2, Seoul, Korea, Aug. 2005. Keynote Paper.


Seminars

Seminars

Suen has given 195 seminars at major computer industries and various government and academic institutions around the world. He has been the principal investigator of 30industrial/government research contracts, and has received many research grants from national and provincial funding agencies. 

For More Information, you may visit the web page at: http://www.cenparmi.concordia.ca/

Present positions

Director: Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence (CENPARMI)

Hon. Concordia Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence & Pattern Recognition

Advisory position

Member, Advisory Board, 2006-2014, IAPR (International Association for Pattern Recognition)

Member, Advisory Committee, 2006-2012, ICPR (International Conference on Pattern Recognition)

Member, Advisory Committee, 2007-, National Lab of Pattern Recognition, Academia Sinica, Beijing

Fellowships of professional/academic societies

Fellow, Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada(since 1995)


Fellow, IEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.(since 1986)


Fellow, IAPR, International Association for Pattern Recognition (since 1994)

Editorial work

Editorial Board: Pattern Recognition and Image Processing,International Journal, Russian Academy, 2016

Guest Editor: Special Issue on Papers from Mexican Conf on Pattern Recog. Neural Computing, 2016


Appointed Editor of Book Series on Language Processing, Pattern Recognition,and Intelligent Systems, World Scientific Pub., 2015


He is the Emeritus Editor-in-Chief of refereed journal Pattern Recognition


Advisory Editor of refereed journal Pattern Recognition Letters


Associate Editor of 3 other refereed journals related to pattern recognition, AI, signal and image processing, expert systems and their applications.

Founder of conferences and awards

Established a permanent CENPARMI scholarship for outstanding graduate students


Founder of ICDAR (International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, 1991-)


Founder of ICFHR (International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, formerly IWFHR, 1990-)


Founder of VI (Vision Interface,1988-2003).


Founder of the ICDAR Awards (maximum of three awards per ICDAR conference, to honour outstanding young and/or established researchers in the field of DAR, 1997-).

Honorary Chair, General Chair or Co-Chair, Chair or Program Chair, or Committee Member

Recent years

Conference Chair & Keynote Speaker, 2nd Global Summit and Expo on Multimedia & Applications,Aug. 15-16, 2016, London, UK

Honorary Chair: Int. Conf. on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition Shenzhen, China, 2016 (Nov. 2016)

Honorary Chair & Keynote Speaker: Mexicon Conf. on Pattern Recognition, 2014

ANNPR: General Chair, Artificial Neural Network on Pattern Recognition. Montreal, Canada, Oct. 2014.

MCPR: Honorary Chair, Mexico Conference in Pattern Recognition, Cancun, Mexico, June 2014

ACM RACS: Honorary Chair, Research in Adaptive Converging Systems, Montreal, Canada, Oct. 2013

ICFHR: Honorary Chair, The 13th Int. Conf. on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, ICFHR 2012, Bari, Italy, Sept. 2012

ICFHR: General Chair, International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, Montreal, 2008

ICDAR: Honorary Chair, International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, Curitiba, Brazil,  2007

IWFHR: Honorary Chair, International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, 2002

ICPR: General Chair, International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Quebec City, 2002

Pre-2000
ICDAR: General Chair, International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, Montreal, Aug. 1995

IWFHR: General Chair, International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, Montreal, April 1990

ICCPCO: General Chair, the International Conference on Computer Processing of Chinese and Oriental Languages, Toronto, August 1988

President and other authority of national and international organizations

CIPPRS: President, 6 yrs, Canadian Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Society

CLCS: President, 3 yrs, and Vice-President, 3 yrs, International Chinese Language Computer Society,

IAPR: Governor and Committee Member, 14 yrs, Technical Committee Chair, 4 yrs, International Association for Pattern Recognition,

RTUA: Director, 2 yrs, Recognition Technology Users Association, U.S.A.,

CSA: Chairman of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Committee for 10 yrs, Canadian Standards Association

Seminars, public lectures and supervision

Suen has given 195 invited addresses and seminars at different universities and industries around the world,including: Burroughs (USA), Fujitsu (Japan), NEC (Japan), Xerox (USA),Microsoft (USA), Philips, Bell Canada, ITRI (Taiwan), ELSAG (Italy),Chinese Academies of Sciences, universities, government and other agencies.

Suen has guided/hosted 87 visiting scientists and professors, and has supervised 86 doctoral and master's graduates.

External Examiner: Ph.D. Thesis, University of Macau, China, 2016 (will attend)


Recognition

Awards

Elsevier Pattern Recognition Journal Award of Excellence (2016)

  • in recognition of distinguished editorial services (1984-2016)

Gold Medal, University of Bari, Italy, September 2012

  • for having founded and chaired twice the International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, and as the most influential scientist in cultivating and advancing the field of handwriting recognition by computer.

The 2010 ICFHR Award "Shawl"
  • for being a leading scientist in Pattern Recognition and the pioneer of ICFHR series of International Conferences.

The 2008 Lifetime Research Achievement Award
  • for achievements including (but not limited to) the impact of the research on national and international academic & scientific communities, the guidance and training of highly qualified research personnel, and the high level of external research funding & publications, from the Faculty of Engineering & Computer Science, Concordia University.

The 2008 Lifetime Citations Award
  • for being the Faculty member with the highest number of citations in the Science Index, from the Faculty of Engineering & Computer Science, Concordia University.
The 2006 IWFHR Award
  • for initiating the IWFHR series of International Workshops on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition

The 2005 IAPR, ICDAR Outstanding Achievement Award
  • presented at the 8th International Conference on Document Analysis Recognition, 
for more than thirty years of outstanding leadership, research and services 
in pattern recognition, handwriting recognition and document analysis

The 2002 ICPR Meritorious Award
  • for outstanding Contributions and Leadership as General Chair of the 
International Conference on Pattern Recognition (Quebec City)

The 1998 Concordia "Research Fellow" Award
  • for Research Excellence in Pattern Recognition.

The 1997 Outstanding Service Award
  • from the Canadian Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Society

The 1992 ITAC/NSERC National Award
($25,000 cash & $25,000 research grant)
  • for Academic Excellence and Outstanding Contributions to Research in Information Technology

The 1988 Outstanding Achievement Awards
  • from the Federation of Chinese Canadian Professionals

The 1988 Outstanding Service Award
  • from the Recognition Technology Users Association, U.S.A.

Honours

Fellow

  • of IEEE,
  • IAPR, and
  • Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada.

Member
  • of Provincial (FCAR, 2 times), National (NSERC, 2 years), 
USA (NSF, National Science Foundation, 1 year), 
Grant Selection Committees
  • Member
  • of NSERC Delegation: visited, held meetings with Chinese NSF, 
and signed a Memorandum of Understanding

The 1967-68 Swire Scholar
  • from the University of Hong Kong

Research awards

NSERC awards (1974-2019)

  • for "Computer Recognition of Handwriting, Faces, Money Currencies, and Design of Digital Fonts”

FCAR awards, Ministry of Education, Quebec (1973-2004)
  • for "Analysis and recognition of document images"

Canadian Foundation for Innovation awards (2002 - 2008)
  • Co-investigator for "Innovative applications for information technology"
  • Co-Investigator for "Synchromedia"

Industrial contracts (1983-2011)
  • Principal Investigator of major computer industry and government contracts

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