Monthly Archives: March 2015

Congratulations to Hyunsuk Ko, a current MCL member, for getting an offer from the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ERTI).ETRI is one of the best known Korean research labs in the area of information and communications technologies with international reputation and visibility. Hyunsuk has accepted the offer and will join the Department of “Realistic Broadcasting Media Research” as a senior researcher. He will conduct research on 3D/UHDTV broadcasting technology, high-efficiency/scalable video coding etc. in the next several years.

Hyunsuk said, “Most companies are actively hiring good candidates nowadays. There are more openings for software engineers than any other positions because giant IT companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. are leading the market. On the other hand, if you have an expertise in big data analysis, machine learning and computer vision, the chance to get a decent offer increases significantly, which means that MCL members do have a bright future.”

Hyunsuk got offers from Korean companies such as Samsung and LG and Korean national research lab, ETRI. He had interviews with US companies such as Apple, Google, and Amazon as well. After pondering his future career between ETRI and these IT companies, Hyunsuk eventually decided to join ETRI to be an academic researcher rather than being an engineer. Besides, his research background fits the need of the ETRI team very well.

Looking backward on his PhD life, Hyunsuk said that his major growth came from the process of being trained as an independent researcher. Hyunsuk got his MS degree by working on H.264/AVC video coding only. In contrast, he conducted research on quite a few topics during his PhD years, such as 2D-to-3D conversion, HEVC-based 3D video, objective quality metric development for stereoscopic images, and other stereovision [...]

In March 2015, MCLab has a new visiting scholar, Prof. Songbin Li. Prof. Li is Professor at Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Science, China. We are glad to have an interview with him, talking about his previous research experiences and future expectations at USC.

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and describe your previous research experience?

I come from the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Before joining IOA in 2012, I received my Ph.D. from the National Network New Media Engineering Research Center (3NMedia), Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Science in 2010 and then I worked as a post-doc in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University. My research focuses on multimedia signal processing especially on multimedia forensics and security, as well as steganography and steganalysis. I am also interested in creative technology related to network new media, such as computer animation and film special effects production technology.

2. What is your first impression of USC and MCLab?

USC is a world-famous university and the campus is very beautiful. USC is full of diversity, where students and faculties are from various countries and ethnic groups. As for MCLab, Prof. Kuo has, to a remarkable extent, a global reputation in multimedia technology area. Under his lead, the MCLab is vital and high-yielding of scientific papers. The students in MCLab are all very smart, enthusiastic and hard-working. I think they will make a difference in the future.

3. What is your future expectation and plan in MCLab? ​

I have several aims of my visit. First, I would like to join a certain subgroup related to steganography and steganalysis, aiming to make some contribution to MCLab. Second, I hope to continue the research [...]