Monthly Archives: November 2015

Thanksgiving Luncheon of MCLab

Thanksgiving luncheon has been a tradition of MCL for over twenty years and this year is no exception. This Thursday (11/25/2015), Prof. Kuo held the Thanksgiving luncheon for all MCL members at China Great Buffet in El Monte. More than twenty people including Prof Kuo’s family and other guests invited by MCL members attended this luncheon. We enjoyed the tasty food there including sushi, sashimi, seafood, Chinese food and dessert. This was also a great opportunity for MCL members to get to know each other. We chatted casually and most topics were about Thanksgiving plans.

Although we could not spend Thanksgiving with our family, we really felt quite warm when celebrating Thanksgiving together with lab fellows.

By |November 29th, 2015|News|Comments Off on Thanksgiving Luncheon of MCLab|

Interview with MCL member Longguang Song

Longguang (William) Song, a USC graduate, recently obtained a full-time offer from Google. Congratulations!

William obtained his MS and BS degree from USC and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2015 and 2013, respectively. During his study at USC, he conducted directed research on video/image quality assessment at MCL.

1. How did your graduate study at USC and DR experiences at MCL help you? (technically and psychologically)

The experiences of studying at USC and joining MCL change the way I think of everything. I have learnt a lot from Professor Kuo’s class as well as his insightful talks, which are really eye opening. Another great thing is that I have met lots of smart and friendly people here. Some of them become my best friends.

2. What was the hardest time during job hunting and how did you overcome it?

Looking for a job is tough, at least for me. The worst thing I have is that I didn’t get a single interview for almost three months, I was really frustrated. Thanks to my friends, they gave me lots of support so that I can keep going. So be nice to your friends.

3. Suggestions to current graduate students? (e.g. interview strategy and preparation, etc.)

I suggest students who want to find a job here start preparing as soon as possible. It will be helpful if you can gain some research and internship experience. In addition, interview is a communication process. Be sure to practice how to talk clearly about yourself and you ideas.

I hope all of you can enjoy your life here.

By |November 22nd, 2015|News|Comments Off on Interview with MCL member Longguang Song|

Interview with MCL member Ping Wang

Ping Wang is a MS student majoring in Electrical Engineering (Multimedia) at USC. She is conducting directed research (DR) at MCL since the beginning of Fall 2015. We had an interview with her, talking about her research at MCL.

1. Could you please briefly introduce your research at MCL?

My research focuses on quality assessment of compressed image/video based on human’s visual perception. In this research, my group developed a Just Noticeable Difference (JND)-based image/video quality assessment metric, and conducted JND subjective test to collect data. A method to process the measured raw data is proposed afterwards, from which a human-centric quality database is constructed.

2.  Why did you choose MCL to conduct your DR?

It has to do with my major. I’m a multimedia-focusing MS student who has great passion in image/video processing and related technology. I have been taken courses in the previous three semesters yet haven’t got a taste of researching. I feel that doing a research in my cherished field is a perfect end mark for my master’s degree.

3. It’s coming to your end of DR. How would you evaluate it? Do you find it helpful for your study or future career at USC? What do you gain from this experience?

I think this short DR period at MCL is a very unforgettable experience in my whole life. Here I was provided tons of resources. It’s an amazing group where I can always find new things to learn, where each member is helpful and willing to share their experience, where everybody including Professor Kuo is working closely together and where other people’s wisdom can actually inspire me a lot. I’m pretty happy that my master’s degree is fulfilled by the valuable experience here in MCL.

By |November 16th, 2015|News|Comments Off on Interview with MCL member Ping Wang|

Interview with new MCL member Yueru Chen

In fall 2015, MCL has a new PhD student, Yueru Chen. Yueru received her Bachelor degree of physics from University of Science and Technology of China in Fall 2014. We had an interview with her.

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself? (Previous research experience, project experience, research interest and expertise)

I get my Bachelor degree of physics from University of Science and Technology of China in Fall 2014. And I have already studied for one year in the physics department of USC. My previous research topics are all related to physics. One is about Graphene Growth on Functional Semiconductor Substrate. Another one is about dynamic characteristic of endocytosis through quantum dots fluorescence probe.

I always consider to transfer to more practical research areas. And then I find MCL which is really attractive to me. I am glad to have an opportunity to study here!

 
2.What’s your first impression of USC and MCL?

USC is a small but beautiful university. It creates a comfortable studying atmosphere. Also there are many Chinese students, especially in the USC Viterbi School. MCL is like a big family where everyone is warm and friendly.

 
3. What’s your future expectation for MCL?

Now I work with Xiaqing on 3D retrieval. He is very helpful and patient to me. From there, I want to learn deeply about computer vision and have better understanding on my research. It is really lucky to join our big family, and I hope that in the future I can be a well-trained PhD student and show our passion and knowledge to others as a member of MCL.

By |November 8th, 2015|News|Comments Off on Interview with new MCL member Yueru Chen|

Sudeng Hu passed his defense

Sudeng Hu, a MCL member, has passed his defense on Oct 26, 2015. Congratulations!

His dissertation title is “Techniques for Compressed visual data quality assessment and advanced video coding”. Object quality assessment for compressed images and videos is critical to various image and video compression systems that are essential in the delivery and storage. In the thesis, an image quality metric (IQM) and a video quality metric (VQM) are proposed based on perceptually weighted distortion in term of the MSE. To capture the characteristics of HVS, for images, a spatial randomness map is proposed to measure the masking effect and a preprocessing scheme is proposed to simulate the processing that occurs in the initial part of human HVS. For the VQM, the dynamic linear system is employed to model the video signal and is used to capture the temporal randomness of the videos. The performance of the proposed IQM and VQM are validated on various image and video databases with various compression distortions. The experimental results show that the proposed IQM and VQM outperforms other benchmark quality metrics.

Sudeng gave a nice talk with clarity and smooth flow. The Committee was impressed by his high quality research work and results. When talking about his success in his research work, Sudeng shared his experience with us. He believes that 4 years of PhD life gives him many good memories to have in the rest of his life. He has been enjoying working and studying with our group members since the first day he joined the MCL lab. He also enjoyed conducting research here under the guidance of Prof. Kuo. Prof. Kuo and him had an interesting research topic with great challenges. They had hard time to conquer [...]

By |November 1st, 2015|News|Comments Off on Sudeng Hu passed his defense|