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MCL has a new Master’s student, Chunyang Xia, 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 graduated from Tongji University in 2013 (2009-2013) with CS BS and received CS MS at USC in Dec. 2015. Lots of researches and projects I have done are related to Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Big Data, HPC, NLP ,and so on. My graduation project at Tongji University is a video retrieval system on near duplicate video, which will retrieve partial similar videos back given a query.

2. What’s your first impression of USC and MCL?
USC is a great University. We have faculties and students with high passion and motivation. We are encouraged to seek our interested projects to work on. Team work in projects also is a great experience for students and we can benefit a lot, not only the academic experience. MCL is a great lab at USC. There are lots of nice people working together. People work close to each other and share experience and finding in research.

3. What’s your future expectation for MCL?
As I work in a research lab, My current goal in MCL is fighting for the submission of ACCV, as well as supporting other people on my team.

Jian Li, a PhD student in MCLab, recently obtained an internship offer from Apple. Congratulations! We have an interview with him about internship hunting.

1.  How does the study in USC and MCL help you?

My study at USC especially in MCL helps me a lot in varieties of aspects. First, my capability of solving problems is enhanced by the research experience in MCL. We learn about the state-of-the-art algorithms, have brainstorm, and discuss logically almost everyday in our lab. Professor’s feedback and interaction with group members help us to explore the fundamental challenging of a problem and the way to think in deep. Second, my programming skills are sharpened through the research projects. We have great emphasize on coding style in order to deliver easily understandable programming. This experience attracts the industrial people’s interest since it shows that we can not only think in theoretically, but also implement ideas in details. Third, we are trained with teamwork spirit in our lab. The MCL organization composed of sub-groups benefits us to work together in a much efficient way. Knowing how to communicate with people, what to learn from others and how to collaborate will be a treasure for our future career.

2. What makes you stand out among other candidates applying for the same position?
I feel that broaden computer vision knowledge and good oral presentation are the key points. There are many group members in MCL and the variety of topics cover many research fields. Therefore, we have the chance to learn different technologies in different areas through our group seminar sharing. This indeed serves us as a broaden knowledge pool so that our members have richer capability. On the other hand, the group seminar makes everyone have the opportunity to present our own research [...]

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 [...]

Alejandro Koretzky, a MCL alumnus, is currently working on his own start-up company named Tunesplit. We had an interview as well as a friendly conversation with him.

Alejandro came from Argentina in 2013 to pursue a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, specializing in multimedia and creative technologies. His focus is on signal processing and machine learning.

During his study, he developed a strong interest in source separation and decided to conduct research in this field. Being a musician (both singer and writer), Alejandro became interested in developing an algorithm that automatically decomposes audio according to its sources (e.g. guitar, keyboard, singer, etc.). This would give the user the ability to access and manipulate the individual sources within an audio mix, and thus, personalize the music listening experience. To make it convenient for the users, this splitting process needs to be conducted in real time. In order to make his idea come true, Alejandro took Directed Research with Professor Kuo, who not only supervised him in research but also helped him establish connections with other people.

Starting from the first prototype, an iPhone app, Alejandro converted his idea to a real product and entered the battlefield of business as well. His team was selected by the Viterbi Startup Garage, a program which provides support in funding, space, strategic, and financial resources. Currently, he is focusing on connecting his product with Spotify.

Reflecting on his experiences as a member of MCL, Alejandro says he is very proud of the lab. He believes it is not only a great place for conducting research, but also a great place to connect with other people and learn about other research projects. He also would like to share the following advice with us and [...]

In spring 2016, MCL has a new master student, Zhehang Ding. We welcomed him and had an interview with him.

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

My name is Zhehang Ding, from China. I earned a bachelor’s degree from Hangzhou Dianzi University in Electronic and Information Engineering. In the last year of my undergraduate study I attended a program in Queen’s University Belfast, UK and finished my thesis about augmented reality there. After that, I became a master student in USC to study image processing and pattern recognition.

I have been an amateur astronomer and photographer for about eight years. So playing with images is just like a part of my daily life. I am very interested in the techniques involved as well. Furthermore, I am extremely curious about the nature of consciousness and intelligence, especially about how to teach computer to see and think. It is these interests that led me into image processing first and then the world of computer vision finally . I feel that I really have to learn much more, from both knowledge and methodology, in order to satisfy my curiosity. Therefore I applied a directed research program and joined MCL this semester.

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

After being living almost all my life in humid eastern China and recently in pastoral Northern Ireland, I feel both strange and curious living in this dessert-like city. USC for me is like a oasis in this dessert, not only for its natural environment and architectures, but also for the active academic atmosphere and its rich cultural activities.

When I first attended the MCL ‘s seminar, I was impressed and actually shocked by these [...]