MCLab has a new Ph.D student, Siyang Li. Let’s give Siyang a warm welcome! She received B.S. degree from the University of Hong Kong this June. She decided to join USC MCLab to pursue her Ph.D degree beginning from this Fall semester. She was interviewed by MCLab.

What were your first impression of USC and our lab?

USC has a large and beautiful campus. Viterbi School is really a big family and I have met a lot of new students during my first week here. The volunteers were so nice and helpful that I got the paperwork done easily.

MCLab is also a big family and the group mates are friendly and helpful. Yuzhuo helped with housing issues and Sudeng gave me information about academic work. I really appreciate that. Prof. Kuo emphasized teamwork in the first meeting, which I found impressive. I chatted with some group mates and I think we are going to take advantage of a large group – seeking advice from each other and exchanging ideas.

Could you talk about your research interest?

At present, I think I still keep an open mind in the field of computer vision. I would love to try different topics in the first few months and it is my honor to have Sudeng as my mentor. The starting point would be security enhancement in video surveillance. Currently video surveillance is mainly used for investigation after accidents. However, if the computer can automatically detect events such as fighting or shooting, and inform the security staff on time, accidents, especially fatalities may be prevented. Therefore, at the very beginning, I will mainly focus on the event detection and maybe we will build the database with the video provided by USC surveillance system.

What’s your expectation or goal when you are working in MCLab?

My academic goal is to develop something helpful, for example, an algorithm that helps to detect events in the video surveillance system. I am also looking forward to developing my presentation and communication skills, which are important in future career. The non-academic goal is to build friendship with other group members. It is my honor to work with so many brilliant colleagues and I hope I will be a good teammate as well.