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    Congratulations to Shangwen Li for Summer Internship at Facebook

Congratulations to Shangwen Li for Summer Internship at Facebook

Shangwen Li, a USC graduate, recently obtained an internship offer from Facebook. Congratulations!

Shangwen Li received the B.S. and M.S. degrees, both in electrical engineering, from the Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 2008 and 2011 respectively. Since August 2012, he has been been with Media Communications Lab at University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. His research interests include computer vision, machine learning and video coding. Let us hear what he said about the internship in the coming summer.

1.  How does the study in USC and MCL help you? (technically and psychologically)

First, the research experience at MCL definitely strengthens my skills in finding relevant jobs. Specifically, the research projects not only enable me to think problem thoroughly but also sharpen my coding skill. It helps me to build up the solid domain knowledge in computer vision, particularly image search. Second, the presentation skills training at MCL is very valuable for me to express my thought clearly during interview process, which is a key factor in communication.

2. What makes you stand out among other candidates applying for the same position?
I think I earned the opportunity mainly due to 3 reasons: 1) good coding skills, 2) solid domain knowledge and research experience, and 3) good communication skills. The study at MCL definitely helps me sharpen these 3 skills.

3. Do you have any suggestions to current graduate students? (e.g. interview strategy and preparation, etc.)

First, I would suggest them to develop a good coding habit during research. Research project is actually a very good way of improving your coding skills. Second, try to be a real expert in your research, which means you have to know the state-of-the-art technologies and also have insight about them. Third, you should seize the opportunity of group seminar presentation as this is a valuable chance [...]

By |March 27th, 2016|News|Comments Off on Congratulations to Shangwen Li for Summer Internship at Facebook|
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    Congratulations to Chen Chen for Summer Internship at Facebook

Congratulations to Chen Chen for Summer Internship at Facebook

Chen Chen, a USC graduate, recently obtained an internship offer from Facebook. Congratulations!

Chen received his bachelor degree from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecoms and earned his M.S. at the University of Southern California. He focuses on computer vision research topics in  MCL.  Let us hear what he said about the internship in the coming summer.

1. How does the study in USC and MCL help you? (technically and psychologically)

First. the research studies in MCL build me a solid understanding of the techniques in my field. And I learned how to solve problems from proposals to conclusions independently. The base knowledge and skills helped my to solve new problems during interviews. In addition, MCL provided many opportunities for me to acquire a broad and general view of technologies in Computer Vision and Machine Learning. By attending group seminars and having research discussions with other students in our group, I learned many popular and interest topics and problems, which made me impressive in interviews. Finally, I got many chances in industrial projects in MCL, where I worked on cutting edge industrial technologies. The experience made me competitive for industrial jobs that need industrial job experiences other than research experiences.

2.  What makes you stand out among other candidates applying for the same position?
Since the positions I was targeting at need skills and spirits in dealing with new problems with innovations, I presented advantages over candidates that did not have relevant experiences. Besides, comparing to candidates who also have research experiences, I think our group members are quite unique and competitive in the sense of width of knowledge and skills of presentation. The strict training in MCL stands me out for the same position.

3. Do you have any suggestions to current graduate students? (e.g. interview strategy and preparation, etc.)

First, I recommend [...]

By |March 27th, 2016|News|Comments Off on Congratulations to Chen Chen for Summer Internship at Facebook|

Interview with MCL member Terna Kpamber

MCL has a new Master’s student, Terna Kpamber, in Spring 2016. Let’s give him a warm welcome! Here is a briefly interview with him.

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself? (Previous research experience, project experience, research interest and expertise)
I’m from Nigeria and I moved to the UK in 2009 and studied there until I completed my undergraduate degree in Electronic Engineering in 2014. I worked at Tyco Safety Products form 2012 to 2013 as part of my degree during which I was an electrical hardware engineer. My final project there was to design a wirelessly controllable socket strip which monitored current consumption and sent real time updates to the control hub.
I began my masters at USC in the Spring of 2015 and I focused on engineering application courses in signal processing. Currently I’m working on a project in which we monitor the board game of scrabble through a camera and we want to be able to automatically detect words formed by players during the game and calculate their game points.
I’m more of an application person than a research person, so I regularly read research papers and write programs to implement their algorithms. My languages of choice are C++ and Python, but I also program in Swift for the iOS and OS X platforms.
Outside of engineering I really enjoy playing and watching soccer and since moving to America I’ve become interested in watching basketball.
 

2. What’s your first impression of USC and MCL?
I wasn’t sure what to expect before coming to USC because I had never been to America. Once I settled in I began to enjoy USC, because the weather was fantastic and there were always activities going on on campus.
I [...]

By |March 6th, 2016|News|Comments Off on Interview with MCL member Terna Kpamber|

Interview with new MCL member Ahmet Ozbek

In spring 2016, MCL has a new Master’s student, Ahmet Ozbek. We welcomed him and had an interview with him.

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

I graduated from Electrical Engineering department of Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2014 with an emphasis on Signal&Image processing. Then I decided to continue my studies at USC focusing on Signal&Image processing towards masters degree.

 

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

First thing I noticed about MCL is how hardworking its members are. It is also very nice to see that people help each other out and they are willing to share their knowledge. The special thing is that Professor Kuo pushes to help students to reach out to their full potential, he tries to get the best out of his students.

 

3. What’s your future expectation for MCL?

I believe that there is a strong progress of research and strong unity MCL. Therefore MCL is already doing very well and I can see that it is going to accomplish much more in the future.

By |March 6th, 2016|News|Comments Off on Interview with new MCL member Ahmet Ozbek|

Congratulations to Young Ju Jeong for Passing Her Defense

Young Ju Jeong, a MCL member, has passed her defense on Feb 16, 2016. Congratulations!

Her dissertation title is “Autostereoscopic 3D Display Rendering from Stereo Sequences”. Rapid developments in 3D display technologies have enabled consumers to enjoy 3D environments in an increasingly immersive manner through various display systems such as stereoscopic, multiview, and light field displays. Sufficient 3D contents for various display systems play important role for further commercial viability of 3D display products. The common 3D content, however, is only stereo sequences for 3D stereoscopic displays and it is not guaranteed that the stereo sequences are well calibrated. 3D display rendering algorithm is a key to generating 3D contents from the conventional stereo sequences. In this dissertation we investigate 3D display rendering framework for various type 3D display systems from conventional stereo contents.

Young Ju gave a nice talk with clarity and smooth flow. The Committee was impressed by her high quality research work and results. About her future plan, she wants to generate real like 3D displays which enables us to enjoy wonderful 3D world through conventional devices such as mobiles, tablets, and laptops. When talking about her success in her research work, Young Ju shares her experience with us. She thinks that she couldn’t continue her PhD about 9 years ago and she almost gave up to finish it. However, she could resume PhD again because of others’ help and eventually she can pass the defense exam. She really appreciates for the help and support especially for Prof. Kuo’s sincere guidance.

 

By |February 21st, 2016|News|Comments Off on Congratulations to Young Ju Jeong for Passing Her Defense|

Interview with MCL member Wenchao Zheng

MCL has a new PhD student, Wenchao Zheng, in Spring 2016. Let’s give him a warm welcome!

He received the B.S. degree from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China in 2014. We had a briefly interview with him.

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

Before coming to USC, I got my B.S. degree from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China in 2014. I previously was a Ph.D. student in EE-Electrophysics until December 2014 when I found myself more interested in Computer Vision and Machine Learning. I get the precious opportunity to do research in this field at MCL thanks to Prof. Kuo.

 

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

My first impression on MCL is that it is a very big group, I was wondering how Prof. Kuo could have so much energy to take care of every student. It turns out that my thought was unnecessary. Prof. Kuo is a very energetic and active researcher on the frontier. He knows a lot and is very experienced. He exerts his lifelong knowledge to help his students in every way that a student can be helped. I feel lucky to be a member at MCL.

 

3. What’s your future expectation for MCL?

I wish all the members at MCL work hard together and make MCL a famous lab in computer vision and machine learning in the world.

By |February 13th, 2016|News|Comments Off on Interview with MCL member Wenchao Zheng|
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    Congratulations to Xiaqing Pan for Passing His Qualifying Exam

Congratulations to Xiaqing Pan for Passing His Qualifying Exam

Xiaqing Pan successfully passed his Qualifying exam on Jan 19th, 2016. The title is “Feature extraction and content-based retrieval of 2D shapes and 3D mesh models”. His Qual Exam Committee includes: C.-C. (Jay) Kuo (chair),  Antonio Ortega, Justin P. Haldar, B. Keith Jenkins, Aiichiro Nakano (outside member).

In this proposal, a robust two-stage shape retrieval (TSR) method is proposed to address the 2D shape and 3D shape (mesh model) retrieval problem. A challenge existing in most state-of-the-art retrieval methods is that they may retrieve globally dissimilar shapes in high ranks. He decomposed the decision process into two stages. He first removed globally irrelevant shapes in Stage I and then ranked the globally irrelevant shapes in Stage II. He designed more robust global features for each problem. The retrieval performances were significantly improved by integrating our global features with the proposed TSR method.

By |January 24th, 2016|News|Comments Off on Congratulations to Xiaqing Pan for Passing His Qualifying Exam|