Nicholas Beser

Nicholas Beser received a Ph.D. in 1983 in systems engineering and computer science from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Beser has worked at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for over 30 years. Currently, he is Section Supervisor for the Signal and Image Processing and Analysis Section of the Seeker and Information Processing Group. Dr. Beser is the Lead Engineer for several computer vision and video projects. He was also the Project Manager for the Multimedia Forensic Laboratory and was the Chief Engineer on the Digital Video Authentication Project. He has also been the lead researcher on several Video Exploitation IR&D projects developing video mosaic, super-resolution, and automated scene change detection methods. In addition, he has supplied video exploitation services to both Howard County Police and Baltimore City Police in the analysis and enhancement of crime video tapes. Dr. Beser is the JHU/APL representative to the International Standards Organization Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) Panel. He has authored many papers on data compression standards, history of space data compression, and data compression quality measures. Dr Beser is also co-inventor of several patent’s covering surveillance, forensic data and 3D Visualization. In addition, he also has extensive work experience in the area of high- speed signal and data processing covering both design and software. Prior to working at the Applied Physics Laboratory, Dr. Beser was a Lead Electronics Systems Engineer at General Electric Valley Forge Pennsylvania. During that period Dr. Beser was the project lead for a MIL-STD-1750A flight computer for a satellite mission. This computer was designed and certified by the Air Force in 9 months as part of a high priority effort. Dr. Beser also was on loan supporting the CR&D (GE Corporate Research and Development) DARPA MIPS project (Floating Point Unit).

Education History

• B.E.S, Engineering Science, Johns Hopkins University
• M.S.E, Solid State Physics, Johns Hopkins University
• Ph.D, Systems Engineering and Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania

Work Experience

Principal Professional Staff, JHU Applied Physics Laboratory

Publications

Contributed and edited material for Iconic Bibliography, W. Huggins and D. Entwisle (ed.), Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore (1974).

With G. Wouch, T. Frost, J. Cooper, and D. Retecki, “Containerless Processing of Tungsten,” NASA Tech. Brief (Oct 1975).

“Microprocessor Vendor Selection and Evaluation,” AIIE Conference, New York (24 Apr 1978).

1980 High Speed Storage/Transfer Technology, Final Report, TIS 81 SDS 012, General Electric Co., Valley Forge, Pa. (1980).

“On the Ragged Edge of Software Science,” Second Annual GOSAM Conference on Software Engineering, Daytona, Fla. (Feb 1981).

Error Detection and Correction Technology, Final Report, TIS 81 SDS 059, General Electric Co., Valley Forge, Pa. (1981).

1981 High Speed Storage/Transfer Technology, Final Report, TIS 81 SDS 062, General Electric Co., Valley Forge, Pa. (1981).

“Foundations and Experience in Software Science,” in ACM Sigmetrics: Performance Evaluation Review, Vol. 11(3) (Fall 1982). (Presented at IBM Software Counting Rules Conference (SCORE 82), New York (Mar 1982).

1982 High Speed Storage/Transfer Technology, Final Report, TIS 82 SDS 051, General Electric Co., Valley Forge, Pa. (1982).

“General Electric Software Reliability Plan,” IEEE Software Reliability Standards Committee, New Orleans, La. (Feb 1983).

“Software Reliability,” Fourth Annual GOSAM Conference on Software Engineering, Daytona, Fla. (Mar 1983).

Foundations and Experiments in Software Science, Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania (May 1983).

With R. Hahn, “The Integrated Design Environment,” General Electric Computer Aided Technology (CATCH 84) Conference, Charlottesville, Va. (Sep 1984).

With C. Albitz, and R. Hahn, “Radiation Hardened Computer Architecture Concerns,” Fifth AIAA/IEEE/ACM/NASA Conf. on Computers in Aerospace, Long Beach, Calif. (Oct 1985).

With L. Larkin (Ed.), “Real Time Software Design,” in The Advanced Course in Computers General Electric Company, Valley Forge (1985).

“Radiation Hardened Computer Architecture.” guest lecture presented at Villanova University (Oct 1986).

With L. Larkin (ed.), “Distributed Processing,” in The Advanced Course in Computers, General Electric Company, Valley Forge (1986).

Parallel Processing Algorithms for On Board Image Compression, TIS 88 SDS 004, General Electric Co., Valley Forge, Pa. (27 Apr 1988).

“Development of a AIAA Standard for Space Based Data Compression”, Computing in Aerospace 9 Conference, Oct 1993, page 129-138.

“Image Data Compression Metrics”, Computing in Aerospace 9 Conference, Oct 1993, page 292-303.

“Space Data Compression Standards”, APL Technical Digest, July-September 1994, Volume 15, No 3., page 206-223.

Averch, T. D, O’Sullivan D, Breitenbach, C., Beser, N., Schulam P. G., Moore, R. G., Kavoussi, L. R., “Digital Radiographic Imaging Transfer: A Comparison with Plain Radiographs,” Journal of Endourology, Vol 11, No 2, April 1997, page 99-101.

Droege, T. F., Albertson, C., Gombert, G., Gutzwiller, M., Molhant, N. W., Johnson, H., Skvarc, J., Wickersham, R. J., Richmond, M. W., Rybski., P. , Henden, A., Beser, N., Pittinger, M, Kluga, B., “TASS – The Amateur Sky Survey”, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,, Vol. 29, p. 818, May, 1997.

Richmond, M. W., Droege, T. F., Gombert, G., Gutziller, M., Henden, A. A, Albertson, C., Beser, N., Molhant, N., Johnson, H., “TASS Mark III Photometric Survey of the Celestial Equator”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 112, Issue 769, March 2000, page 397.

Beser, N. D., Duerr, T. “Authentication of Digital Video”, NATIA 18th Annual Training Conference and Technology Exhibition, Tampa, FL., August 4-8, 2003.

Beser, N. D., Duerr, T. “Digital Video Authenticator”, Optical Science and Technology Conference, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXVI, SPIE, August 8, 2003.

Duerr, T. E., Beser, N. D., Staisiunas, G. P., “Information Assurance Applied to Authentication of Digital Evidence”, Forensic Science Communications, Vol 6, Number 4, October 2004

N. D. Beser and D. F. DeMenthon, IR Stereo Image processing for 3D Chuff Model Development, Missile Defense Sensors, Environments and Algorithms (MD-SEA) conference. 10/24-25/11

Honors and Awards

• Patent Awarded: US 8, 130, 260, entitled “System and Method for 3-Dimensional Display of Image Data”;, March 6, 2012. (2012)
• Patent Awarded: US 7, 197, 143, entitled “Digital Video Authenticator”, March 27, 2007. (2007)
• Patent Awarded: US 6, 965, 541 B2, entitled “Gun Shot Digital Imaging System”, February 9, 2006. (2006)
• Howard County Police Citizen Award (April 2003) for volunteer forensic video processing. (2003)
• NASA Certificate of Recognition for Technical Brief (1977)

Professional Organizations

SPIE
ACM