Jonathan J. Hull

Jonathan J. Hull is a research leader and data scientist who has worked on handwriting recognition, document image analysis and machine learning, and he is an inventor on more than 210 issued U.S. patents. He completed a PhD at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1988 under Sargur Srihari with a computational theory of visual word recognition, and in 1994 he published a database for handwritten text recognition research. At the Ricoh California Research Center, he co-chaired the 1996 IAPR Workshop on Document Analysis Systems, and the International Association for Pattern Recognition named him a Fellow in 2000 for contributions to document image analysis. Later patents name him as an inventor of Ricoh's Mixed Media Reality system, which paired printed paper with digital media, and of a ClearCare machine learning system that predicts caregiver attrition.

Works: 172
Citations: 5,937
h-index: 22
Badges: Bridge
Loyal

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

1987–1988

A Buffalo PhD on word recognition

He and Sargur Srihari receive U.S. Patent 4,654,875 in March 1987 for a system to achieve automatic recognition of linguistic strings. With Srihari as his advisor, he completes a PhD at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1988 with the dissertation "A Computational Theory of Visual Word Recognition".
1994–1997

A handwriting recognition database

In 1994, he publishes "A database for handwritten text recognition research" in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, and coauthors "Decision combination in multiple classifier systems" in the same journal with T. K. Ho and S. N. Srihari. At Buffalo, he advises doctoral students Tao Hong, who finishes in 1995, and Chi Fang, who finishes in 1997.
1996

Ricoh and the DAS workshop

In September 1996, representing the Ricoh California Research Center in Menlo Park, he speaks to the Bay Area OCR Interest Group on content-based retrieval from document image databases. In October 1996, he and Suzanne Liebowitz Taylor chair the IAPR Workshop on Document Analysis Systems in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
2000

An IAPR Fellowship

The International Association for Pattern Recognition names him a Fellow in 2000 for contributions to document image analysis and for service to IAPR.
2006–2010

Mixed Media Reality at Ricoh

In July 2006, Ricoh files a patent naming him with Berna Erol, Jamey Graham, Peter E. Hart, Dar-Shyang Lee and Kurt Wesley Piersol as inventors of a Mixed Media Reality system. The system pairs printed paper with digital photos, movies, audio files or web links, and supports business uses that combine a camera phone with a paper document; the patent is granted in April 2010.
2015–2018

RF-powered sensor tags

A Ricoh patent filed in February 2015 names him, Ken Gudan and Harsha Binnamangalam as inventors of a network sensor system whose tags convert RF energy from an emitter and ambient sources into stored power and send sensor data in Bluetooth Low Energy advertising packets. It is granted in December 2018.
2018–2024

Predicting caregiver attrition

In August 2018, ClearCare files a patent naming him and Geoffrey Nudd as inventors of a machine learning system trained to predict attrition among caregivers who provide in-home care to seniors. The patent is granted in September 2022, and a continuation is granted in November 2024.
As of October 2026

Research leader and data scientist

He is a research leader, data scientist and inventor on more than 210 issued U.S. patents, working in data science, machine learning, the Internet of Things, visual search and image recognition.