Meet the Team
Brian Clipp, Ph.D.
Assistant Director of Computer Vision
Kitware North Carolina
Carrboro, NC
Ph.D. in Computer Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
M.S. in Computer Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
B.S. in Computer Engineering
Clemson University
Brian Clipp, Ph.D. is an Assistant Director on Kitware’s Computer Vision Team located in Carrboro, North Carolina. He leads research and development projects across a broad range of computer vision areas. These areas include user-in-the-loop artificial intelligence, satellite image segmentation, low-shot image classification, zero-shot object detection, real-time 3D reconstruction from video, object detection and classification in infrared imagery, and depth estimation from passive, long-wave infrared sensors. He has either led or been a significant contributor to projects for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD), and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).
Over the course of his career, Brian has published eighteen articles in peer-reviewed proceedings and journals for international computer vision and robotics conferences. He has served as an area chair or reviewer for numerous top-tier computer vision conferences. Since joining Kitware in 2017, he has led proposals resulting in more than $4.6M in funding.
Prior to joining Kitware, Brian spent four years at URC Ventures, a startup company that focuses on commercial applications of 3D reconstruction from imagery. There, he led a team of scientists and software developers to create a system for measuring stockpiles of material from ground-based (iPhone collected) and aerial (unmanned aerial vehicle and manned aircraft) imagery. The system has measured hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory for more than one hundred of the top aggregates, landscape materials, and pulp and paper processors in the world. Brian holds three U.S. patents for his work on stockpile measurement.
Before his time at URC Ventures, Brian worked at Applied Research Associates where he was involved in the DARPA ULTRA-Vis program. This program focused on making a soldier-worn, outdoor augmented reality system to improve the situational awareness of joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs). As part of the program, Brian co-developed algorithms to track the system wearer’s head motion from imagery, fusing computer vision with inertial sensor data.
In anticipation of his graduate studies, Brian spent a year as a civilian employee of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. Through his work as a systems engineer and a programmer, he made contributions to aircraft carrier design and to the Tomahawk Cruise Missile program.
Brian’s doctoral thesis was on real-time 3D reconstruction from imagery. In 2010, he received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. He also received his master’s degree in computer science from UNC in 2008. Brian received his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering with a minor in mathematics from Clemson University in 2004. He graduated magna cum laude. As an undergraduate at Clemson, he completed honors research related to ad hoc wireless radio network transmission scheduling algorithms.
Awards
Outstanding Reviewer presented by the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2019
Best Demonstration for Real-time Reconstruction from Video presented by the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2007
Publications
- F. Yellin, S. McCloskey, C. Hill, E. Smith, and B. Clipp, "Concurrent Band Selection and Traversability Estimation from Long-Wave Hyperspectral Imagery in Off-Road Settings," in 2024 IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2024. [URL]
- D. Melamed, C. Johnson, I. Gerg, Chen Zhao, R. Blue, A. Hoogs, Brian Clipp, and P. Morrone, "UNCOVERING BIAS IN BUILDING DAMAGE ASSESSMENT FROM SATELLITE IMAGERY," in IGARSS 2024 - 2024 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2024.
- D. Melamed, C. Johnson, S. Brockman, R. Blue, A. Hoogs, P. Morrone, and B. Clipp, "Rapid Training of Artificial Intelligence Battle Damage Assessment Tools to New Conflicts," in Proceedings of the National Security Sensor and Data Fusion Committee (NSSDF), 2023.
- C. Funk, B. Clipp, and A. Hoogs, "Scale-MAE: A Scale-Aware Masked Autoencoder for Multiscale Geospatial Representation Learning.," in Proceedings of the National Security Sensor and Data Fusion Committee (NSSDF), 2023.
- D. Davila, D. Du, B. Lewis, C. Funk, J. Van Pelt, R. Collins, K. Corona, M. Brown, S. McCloskey, A. Hoogs, and B. Clipp, "MEVID: Multi-view Extended Videos with Identities for Video Person Re-Identification," in IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2023. [URL]
- C. Reed, R. Gupta, S. Li, S. Brockman, C. Funk, B. Clipp, K. Keutzer, S. Candido, M. Uyttendaele, and T. Darrell, "Scale-MAE: A Scale-Aware Masked Autoencoder for Multiscale Geospatial Representation Learning," in International Conference on Computer Vision 2023, 2023. [URL]
- R. Yu, D. Du, R. LaLonde, D. Davila, C. Funk, A. Hoogs, and B. Clipp, "Cascade Transformers for End-to-End Person Search," in Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2022. [URL]
- A. Menozzi, B. Clipp, E. Wenger, J. Heinly, E. Dunn, H. Towles, J. Frahm, and G. Welch, "Development of vision-aided navigation for a wearable outdoor augmented reality system," in IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium, 2014. [URL]
- D. Roberts, A. Menozzi, J. Cook, T. Sherrill, S. Snarski, P. Russler, B. Clipp, R. Karl, E. Wenger, M. Bennett, J. Mauger, W. Church, H. Towles, S. MacCabe, J. Webb, J. Lupo, J. Frahm, E. Dunn, C. Leslie, and G. Welch, "Testing and evaluation of a wearable augmented reality system for natural outdoor environments," in SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2013. [URL]
- D. Roberts, S. Snarski, T. Sherrill, A. Menozzi, B. Clipp, and P. Russler, "Soldier-worn augmented reality system for tactical icon visualization," in SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2012. [URL]
- E. Dunn, B. Clipp, and J. Frahm, "A geometric solver for calibrated stereo egomotion," in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, 2011. [URL]
- M. Pollefeys, J. Frahm, F. Fraundorfer, C. Zach, C. Wu, B. Clipp, and D. Gallup, "Towards Large-Scale Visual Mapping and Localization," in Robotics Research. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011, pp. 535-555. [URL]
- B. Clipp, J. Lim, J. Frahm, and M. Pollefeys, "Parallel, real-time visual SLAM," in Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2010. [URL]
- J. Frahm, M. Pollefeys, S. Lazebnik, D. Gallup, B. Clipp, R. Raguram, C. Wu, C. Zach, and T. Johnson, "Fast robust large-scale mapping from video and internet photo collections," ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, vol. 65, no. 6, pp. 538-549, Nov. 2010. [URL]
- J. Frahm, M. Pollefeys, S. Lazebnik, B. Clipp, D. Gallup, R. Raguram, and C. Wu, "Fast robust reconstruction of large-scale environments," in Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, 2010. [URL]
- M. Pollefeys, J. Frahm, F. Fraundorfer, C. Zach, C. Wu, B. Clipp, and D. Gallup, "Challenges in Wide-area Structure-from-motion," IPSJ Transactions on Computer Vision and Applications, vol. 2, pp. 105-120, 2010. [URL]
- B. Clipp, "Multi-camera simultaneous localization and mapping," Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2010.
- J. Frahm, P. Fite-Georgel, D. Gallup, T. Johnson, R. Raguram, C. Wu, Y. Jen, E. Dunn, B. Clipp, S. Lazebnik, and M. Pollefeys, "Building Rome on a Cloudless Day," in Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Vision, 2010. [URL]
- B. Clipp, C. Zach, J. Frahm, and M. Pollefeys, "A new minimal solution to the relative pose of a calibrated stereo camera with small field of view overlap," in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, 2009. [URL]
- B. Clipp, C. Zach, J. Lim, J. Frahm, and M. Pollefeys, "Adaptive, real-time visual simultaneous localization and mapping," in Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision, 2009. [URL]
- J. Frahm, M. Pollefeys, B. Clipp, D. Gallup, R. Raguram, C. Wu, and C. Zach, "3D Reconstruction of architectural scenes from uncalibrated video sequences," in Proceedings of the ISPRS International Workshop on 3D Virtual Reconstruction and Visualization of Complex Architectures, 2009.
- C. Wu, B. Clipp, X. Li, J. Frahm, and M. Pollefeys, "3D model matching with Viewpoint-Invariant Patches (VIP)," in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2008. [URL]
- M. Pollefeys, D. Nistér, J. Frahm, A. Akbarzadeh, P. Mordohai, B. Clipp, C. Engels, D. Gallup, S. Kim, P. Merrell, C. Salmi, S. Sinha, B. Talton, L. Wang, Q. Yang, H. Stewénius, R. Yang, G. Welch, and H. Towles, "Detailed Real-Time Urban 3D Reconstruction from Video," International Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 78, no. 2-3, pp. 143-167, Jul. 2008. [URL]
- B. Clipp, J. Kim, J. Frahm, M. Pollefeys, and R. Hartley, "Robust 6DOF Motion Estimation for Non-Overlapping, Multi-Camera Systems," in Proceedings of the IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, 2008. [URL]
- B. Clipp, R. Raguram, J. Frahm, G. Welch, and M. Pollefeys, "A Mobile 3D City Reconstruction System," in Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality Workshop on Virtual Cityscapes, 2008.
- P. Mordohai, J. Frahm, A. Akbarzadeh, B. Clipp, C. Engels, D. Gallup, P. Merrell, C. Salmi, S. Sinha, B. Talton, L. Wang, Q. Yang, H. Stewenius, H. Towles, G. Welch, R. Yang, M. Pollefeys, and D. Nistér, "Real-time video-based reconstruction of urban environments," in International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences - ISPRS Archives, 2007.
- B. Clipp, G. Welch, J. Frahm, and M. Pollefeys, "Structure from Motion via Two-State Pipeline of Extended Kalman Filters," in Proceedings of the British Machine Vision Conference, 2007. [URL]
- A. Akbarzadeh, J. Frahm, P. Mordohai, B. Clipp, C. Engels, D. Gallup, P. Merrell, M. Phelps, S. Sinha, B. Talton, L. Wang, Q. Yang, H. Stewenius, R. Yang, G. Welch, H. Towles, D. Nister, and M. Pollefeys, "Towards Urban 3D Reconstruction from Video," in Proceedings of the International Symposium on 3D Data Processing, Visualization, and Transmission, 2006. [URL]
