computer science

Shimon Ullman

Shimon Ullman is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Shimon Ullman rather than just read about it. In short: Shimon Ullman (Hebrew: שמעון אולמן; born January 28, 1948, in Jerusalem) is a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Ullman's main research area is the study of vision processing by both humans and machines.

Key takeaways

Shimon Ullman belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Shimon Ullman to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Shimon Ullman from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Shimon Ullman (Hebrew: שמעון אולמן; born January 28, 1948, in Jerusalem) is a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Ullman's main research area is the study of vision processing by both humans and machines. Specifically, he focuses on object and facial recognition and has made a number of key insights in this field, including with Christof Koch the idea of a visual saliency map in the mammalian visual system to regulate selective spatial attention.

Education He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977 advised by David Marr.

Research He is the author of several books on the topic of vision, including High-level vision: Object recognition and visual cognition. Ullman is the former head of the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute.

Awards and honours Ullman was awarded the 2008 David E. Rumelhart Prize for Theoretical Contributions to Cognitive Science. In 2014 he received the EMET prize in the field of computer science for his contributions to AI and computer vision. In 2015 Ullman was awarded the Israel Prize in mathematics and computer science. In 2019 he won the Azriel Rosenfeld Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of computer vision. He is the co-founder of Orbotech and a former member of Israel's Council for Higher Education.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Shimon Ullman

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Shimon Ullman claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Shimon Ullman before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Shimon Ullman ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Shimon Ullman

In research: Shimon Ullman appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Shimon Ullman in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Shimon Ullman is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1948 births, Academic staff of Weizmann Institute of Science, Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Shimon Ullman outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Shimon Ullman in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Shimon Ullman means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Shimon Ullman out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Shimon Ullman in simple terms?

Why does Shimon Ullman matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Shimon Ullman?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Shimon Ullman.