Prof Stephen Westland

Biography

Stephen Westland is Professor of Colour Science and Technology in the School of Design at the University of Leeds. He has held several senior management roles at the university, including Head of the School of Design and Faculty Dean. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in the areas of colour measurement, colour imaging, colour design, and machine learning. He is the principal author of the book Colour Science using MATLAB (2004; 2012) and co-author of Universal Principles of Color (2023). He served as President of the Society of Dyers and Colourists in 2019 and was awarded the Davies Medal (2008) from the Royal Photographic Society for his research in colour imaging. He was the founding academic editor of the Journal of the International Colour Association, is a member of the editorial board of Color Research and Application, and is involved in the AIC/ISSC Colour Literacy Project.

Talk Title: Applications of Artificial Intelligence in the Colour Industries 

Since the introduction of the term artificial intelligence in 1956, the last 70 years have seen increasing sophistication and speed for machine-learning algorithms. This presentation will review the main advances that have been made by describing several applications of AI in the colour-using industries. The talk will cover applications using supervised and unsupervised machine learning and will discuss the possibility of software achieving artificial general intelligence and what impact this might have on computational practice in colour, colorimetry and colour imaging. The reasons for the current interest in AI will be discussed and some possible outcomes for the next 5-10 years will be presented.