The SIPI 50th Anniversary Celebration was held on the USC Campus on Saturday, February 18th. The USC Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI) was one of the first research organizations in the world dedicated to image processing. Image processing work began at USC in 1962, and the Institute was founded in 1972 by William K. Pratt and Harry C. Andrews with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). SIPI has graduated around 500 PhDs over the last 50 years. As part of the SIPI 50th Anniversary celebration program, the inaugural SIPI Distinguished Alumni Awards have been established to honor USC SIPI graduates who have made professional and technical contributions that bring extraordinary distinction to themselves, the Institute, and the University.

Among the eight awardees, there are three MCL alumnus Ioannis Katsavounidis, Shan Liu and Chao Yang. Dr. Ioannis Katsavounidis won the senior academia award for outstanding contributions to objective video quality metrics and perceptual optimization of streaming videos. Dr. Shan Liu won the mid-career industry award for contributions to and leadership in multimedia technologies, standardization, and applications. Dr. Chao Yang won the junior industry award for contributions to computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in research publications and in commercial products and services. Congratulations to them!

Many MCL alumnus and current lab members joined the celebration and re-union. We had a great time together refreshing our memories on the past time and bridging different generations which composed of an important part of the MCL family. Happy 50th anniversary to SIPI and look forward to the brighter future for everyone!

 

Some information credit to:

SIPI 50th Anniversary