Dr. Steven K. Rogers

Dr. Steven K. Rogers is the Senior Scientist for Autonomy, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He leads the AFRL Autonomy Capability Team in the rapid advancement of autonomy R&D. Dr. Rogers also leads multi-Directorate coordinated autonomy R&D including the Autonomy in Motion and Autonomy at Rest portfolios.  His personal research has focused on QUalia Exploitation of Sensing Technology, how to build autonomous systems by replicating the engineering characteristics of consciousness.  After retiring from active duty in the Air Force, Dr. Rogers founded a company for developing practical applications of advanced information processing techniques for medical products.  The company invented the world’s most accurate computer aided detection system for breast cancer.  He has over 150 technical publications and more than 20 patents. 

Dr. Rogers initiates, technically plans, coordinates, evaluates, and conducts research and development to advance the knowledge of interdisciplinary ATR and sensor fusion systems for all Air Force aircraft, missile and space systems. He leads collaboration across AFRL in object detection, tracking, geo-location, identification and supporting technologies. He also conducts research and development activities in the broad area of ATR and sensor-fusion technology including phenomenology modeling, model-based and learning algorithms, evaluation and tracking. Dr. Rogers also conducts research and development in image and signal processing, synthetic target and scene modeling, resource allocation and evidence accrual aimed at decreasing the cost and improving the performance of Air Force and Department of Defense systems.

Dr. Rogers has had an extensive career in both government service and civilian industry. He retired from the Air Force after 20 years active-duty service, beginning his Air Force career as a flight line enlisted logistics specialist. He was later commissioned though the Airman Education and Commissioning Program and assigned as research engineer developing of a new high order programming language. Following the completion of his advanced degrees he served as a professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology for more than a decade. While at AFIT he directed research efforts in areas that included identification of targets in a variety of sensors. He also did ground-breaking work in learning algorithms.

As Founder, President, CEO and Chief Scientist of Qualia Computing, Inc., later CADx Systems and then iCAD, Inc., Dr. Rogers led the effort to bring intelligent information processing to women's healthcare. Under his direction the company not only became the leader in mammography computer-aided design, it also developed a multi-modality CAD platform to facilitate the quick and efficient application of the technology to many medical detection problems. Dr. Rogers also has worked on developing practical applications of advanced information processing techniques for other medical products. He has authored several hundred publications and has been awarded over 20 patents.

EDUCATION

1978 Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science, with honors, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

1981 Master of Science degree in electrical engineering (electro optics), Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio

1984 Doctor of Philosophy in electrical engineering, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

ASSIGNMENTS

MAJOR AWARDS AND DECORATIONS

1981 Commandant's Award - Most Outstanding Research, AFIT

1986 Air Force Research and Development Award

1994 Organizing chair, first IEEE World Conference on Computational Intelligence

2002 Plenary speaker, WCCI

Fellow, IEEE and SPIE

(Current as of June 2021)