Scott Acton graduated from Oakton High School in Vienna, Virginia, from Virginia Tech (BS), and from the University of Texas (MS, PhD). He has been on the faculty of the University of Virginia for 26 years and now serves as Chair of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Recently, he served as UVA’s Artificial Intelligence Advisor to the Provost.

Acton was Program Director and acting Deputy Division Director at NSF CISE. His laboratory at UVA is called Virginia Image and Video Analysis. He is best known for work in speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion, robust active contours, and annealing processes to optimize machine learning.

Acton is a Fellow of the IEEE, of AIMBE, and of the Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance. Other awards include the Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer Award, the ARO Young Investigator Award, and the NSF Director’s Award for Superior Accomplishment. He lives in Charlottesville with his wife, Sabrina, and sons, Henry and Colby.