Three-dimensional textures and trace transforms: A tribute to Professor Maria Petrou

摘要

I consider myself lucky, as I had the privilege to meet, respect and admire Professor Maria Petrou, not just for her academic knowledge, rigour and achievements, but her affability and her very nice and warm personality. It took one of her lectures at the BMVC Summer School for me to realise what a superb teacher she was, and a conference to be influenced on the direction of my own doctoral research. It was the summer of 2001 when I met Maria Petrou. I had started my PhD six months earlier and was still in the read all you can and try to understand something, anything phase when I attended the BMVA Computer Vision Summer School at Surrey. Along with many other students from all the corners of the UK, I sat through several session that were closer to keynote speeches designed for peers, than to lectures for novices in the area: this is my research, it is great, look at the fantastic results that I obtained. Prof. Petrou sessions were markedly different. She started explaining everything from square one, made sure that we were following her, step by step, and helped us learn about low level image processing, fuzzy logic and theory vs. ad hoc solutions. She would answer our questions clearly and to the point and when we would be too quiet, she asked questions and if no one answered, she quickly prompted us to participate: come on, wake up! No one would drift away from her lectures after that.