Elisa Barney Smith is a professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering department at Boise State University in Boise Idaho USA, where she has worked since 1999. She received a B.S. in Computer Science and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering all from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. Elisa's main research interests are image processing and machine learning. She applies these to document imaging as well as to biomedical image processing and image processing for materials science research and soil remediation evaluation. She is also PI on a new NSF funded project to design computer chips with an architecture inspired by the human brain.

Document analysis research has been primarily focused around developing models of the degradations produced during document image acquisition, and analyzing the defects that can be produced by the models. Other work in this area includes image comparison for defect detection, ballot image processing, and non-linear image pre-processing to improve binarization and recognition. She has worked on multiple multi-institutional and cross-disciplinary projects, and across wide geographic expanses, including internationally. Her research has been funded by NSF, including a CAREER grant, NASA, NIH, and HP. She was a program chair for ICDAR 2013, and for DRR 2003-2005, and serves on many other conference program committees. She is currently an associate editor for Springer’s International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition.