His research focuses on 3-D face and ear recognition, dental biometrics, visual tracking, human-activity recognition and medical image processing. Prior to joining the University, he was with Philips Research in Briarcliff Manor, New York, where he was a principal member of the research staff and a project leader. At Philips Research he led several projects in image processing and content-based multimedia retrieval. He also represented Philips in the standardization activity of ISO for MPEG-7, where some of his work was included in the standard. He holds 21 U.S. patents and more than 30 international patents. Abdel-Mottaleb coauthored the book Human Analysis from Video, with F. Niu, published in 2008. He has published more than 120 journal and conference papers in the areas of image processing, computer vision and content-based retrieval. He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers fellow and on the editorial board of the Pattern Recognition journal. As chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Abdel-Mottaleb, along with his colleagues, successfully hired several faculty who received the National Science Foundation Career Award. He works closely with colleagues both within the College and in other academic units to develop innovative coursework and curricula related to electrical and computer engineering.