Alberto Elfes

I know Alberto Elfes since we were living in Curitiba, Parana, Brazil, in 1970. He was a 17 year old, tall and serious young person and we instantly created a great friendship since then. At that time we decided that each of us would get three Ph.D., in different areas of knowledge. So I used to joke with him about when he would get his second Ph.D. Well, almost... After his studies at the top engineering school ITA, Alberto decided to pursue his Ph.D. at CMU, Pittsburgh, U.S.A. Once having completed my Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the University of Sao Paulo, I followed Alberto's step and went for a post-doctorate in the U.S.A. After this, I decided to switch careers and to work in Computer Vision. Alberto was instrumental in me getting a post-doc position with Prof. Takeo Kanade, at CMU, in 1986. Once at CMU, we had intense discussions about probabilistic methods in machine sensing and learning. This had a big influence on my later work in Computer Vision and the modelling of biological systems. Our common interests were broad, from literature, to philosophy, to (medieval) music, and so on. I valued his great sense of humor and his warm personality. He is going to be dearly missed.