News

The Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation has just announced the 2020 best paper award winner and runner-up:

Winner: A robust technique for copy-move forgery detection and localization in digital images via stationary wavelet and discrete cosine transform, Mahmood, T., Mehmood, Z., Shah, M., Saba, T.
Runner-up: On data-driven Saak transform, Jay Kuo, C.-C., Chen, Y.

According to the EiC of the journal, the selection process is outlined below:

The committee members checked all papers in 2018 and 2019 and nominated 13 papers.

Each of the 13 papers were evaluated and scored by three committee members on a scale of 1 to 10.
There were 4 papers with approximately similar score. All committee members were given the opportunity to vote for the top.
After voting, the best paper and runner up were selected.
All members supported the above winner and runner-up.

It is a great honor that MCL received the JVCI best paper and runner-up awards in three years in a row.

The 2020 Best Paper Award Runner-up for the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation.
C.-C. Jay Kuo and Yueru Chen, “On data-driven Saak transform,” the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, Vol. 50, pp. 237-246, January 2018.

The 2019 Best Paper Award Runner-up for the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation.
Ronald Salloum, Yuzhou Ren and C.-C. Jay Kuo, “Image splicing localization using a multi-task fully convolutional network (MFCN),” the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, Vol. 51, pp. 201-209, February 2018.

The 2018 Best Paper Award from the Journal of Visual Communications and Image Representation.
C.-C. Jay Kuo, “Understanding convolutional neural networks with a mathematical model,” the Journal of Visual Communication and [...]

Could you briefly introduce yourself and your research interests?

My name is Ganning Zhao. I was born in Weifang, China. This is my first semester here in USC, pursuing master’s degree on Electrical Engineering. I graduated from Guangdong University of Technology, majoring in automation. In my undergraduate, I did a project about audio signal processing using convolutional neural network with my friends and I became interested in signal processing and machine learning since then. My current research interest is image processing and computer vision.

What is your impression about MCL and USC?

I like the campus of USC, because the buildings are beautiful. Particularly, there are many libraries in USC and many of them are exquisite. People in MCL are intelligent and work very hard. I’m also impressed that they are very nice and always willing to help with each other. Professor Kuo is also very nice and caring about everyone in lab. I like the atmosphere here in MCL.

What is your future expectation and plan in MCL?

My research topic in this summer is texture synthesis. I hope I can do a good job in this topic. More importantly, because everyone in MCL are intelligent, I hope I can learn a lot from them during communication and improve my research ability. Also, I want to make more friends here in MCL.

Could you briefly introduce yourself and your research interests?

My name is Zheng Wen, I’m currently pursuing my Master’s degree at USC in Electrical Engineering. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Beihang University, Beijing, China. I’m very curious in math and programming. I found it interesting to do something related matrix and machine learning, so I’m very glad that I Professor Kuo could give me this opportunity to join MCL and dive deeper in image processing, computer vision and machine learning.

What is your impression about MCL and USC?

This is my first year in USC, I found the campus is very beautiful even though kind of small. Leavey Library is a good place to study when we are struggling for the final exams of a semester. I really enjoy the American Chinese cuisine offered by the canteen. MCL is a big family. I get to know the members in MCL by EE569, Professor Kuo is an expert in multimedia, and his understanding in deep learning impressed me a lot. TAs are very experience in image processing and willing to help us.

What is your future expectation and plan in MCL?

In MCL, I want to do some project in image forensics with the help of Yao, learn more about image processing and machine learning, also sharpen my programming skills and make some progress to the domain. I will try my best to get involved in MCL and make friends with everyone.

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

My name is Chengyao Wang and I’m currently pursuing a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering here at USC. Prior to that, I received my B.S. in Automation from Zhejiang University in 2018. With my interest lying in machine learning and computer vision, I’m now working on a summer intern project regarding classification and segmentation of medical images under the guidance of Prof. Kuo. I believe it will be a good starting point of exploring this intriguing area.

2. What is your impression about MCL and USC?

USC is well known for its academic achievements and strong alumni network, and it sure is. Everyone I met here is full of passion about what they’re doing and seems to be always ready to help others. MCL is such a dynamic and cohesive group, where everyone here could get a chance & full support to dig into their own areas of interest. Prof. Kuo is a respected expert with profound domain knowledge as well as a supportive instructor who knows well how to guide students and group people.

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

At this point, I would hope my current project goes on well and treat it with full devotion. I also want to connect with more people at MCL as a newcomer and blend into this warm and big family. Frankly speaking, I don’t have a clear vision for the future yet, but I believe I’ll stick to what I feel is interesting and make some differences.

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

My name is Vasileios Magoulianitis and I was born in Athens, Greece. I joined Viterbi School of USC in Spring 2020, pursuing a Master’s degree on Machine Learning and Data Science. I graduated from the Electrical Engineering department at the University of Thessaly, receiving my bachelor’s degree with honors. At that time, my research interests were focused on video compression and its efficient implementations. The last year of my undergraduate studies, I interned at Irida Labs s.a., where I had my first experience with image processing and computer vision algorithms. Before joining USC, I had been working as a research assistant for the Centre of Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), participating in EU-funded projects. My current research interests revolve around image processing and computer vision, as well as machine learning.

2. What is your impression about MCL and USC?

Since my first days in MCL, I have been impressed about the atmosphere exists in the lab. It maintains a multi-cultural environment that brings together highly talented students with different backgrounds. The knowledge sharing quality is at top level and there exists an underlying energy that pushes everyone to achieve at his top potentials. The learning curve of students in MCL grows really fast, since everyone is willing to help each other and to share his research ideas and suggestions. Professor Kuo collaborates and communicates firmly with his students, showing that he cares about the people in his lab. I would like to take this chance to express my gratitude to him for giving me the chance to work in such a reputable lab. USC and MCL is the right place to carry out research and explore also [...]