Welcome new MCL member Prof. Yongfei Zhang! Prof. Zhang now is a visiting scholar at Media Communications Lab (MCL) at University of Southern California (USC) under the supervision of Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo. He is an Associate Professor with the Beijing Key Laboratory of Digital Media, School of Computer Science and Engineering, and the State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology and Systems, Beihang University, Beijing, China. He was a visiting scholar at University of Missouri, Columbia and Sept. 2007 to Sept. 2009.

Here is a short interview with Prof. Zhang:

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your research interests?

I am Yongfei Zhang, an Associate Professor in Beihang University. I received my B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. degree in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems, both from Beihang University, Beijing, China, in 2005 and 2011 respectively. My current research interests include Real-time High Efficiency Video Coding/Decoding, Computer Vision (Image Retrieval, Vehicle/Person Re-ID), Construction & Referencing of Domain-Specific Knowledge Graph.

2. What is your impression about MCL and USC?

MCL is a large and warm group with great director and students. Group routine activities, like individual meetings and weekly group seminars, are clearly scheduled and well organized with the contributions of each MCL member, which make the research and work very efficient. Besides, Prof. Kuo’s passion for the academic research and group culture development impress me a lot.

3. What is your future expectation and plan in MCL?

Great thanks to Prof. Kuo for hosting me in the big family of MCL. I wish I could enhance myself, with the help and guidance of Prof. Kuo, on teaching, research, and group management. Also, I’d like to make friends with all MCL members. Academically, I wish I could proceed/cooperate on joint image/video coding and understanding, explainable CNN/RNN based CV, as well as graph embedding and referencing.