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The Viterbi-India program is jointly funded by the Indo US Science, Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and the USC VSoE. Each student in the Viterbi-India program will receive stipend and travel reimbursement. These students will come to USC and join one of the labs under EE department during May 20 and July 18, 2015.

After a competitive review process, there will be 20 spots for the Indian students in the program. Among those strong Indian students, Vikranth Reddy is the one who will join MCL in 2015 summer as an intern. We conducted a short interview with him about his previous experiences and future expectations.

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

I am Vikranth Dwaracherla, a third year undergraduate from IIT Bombay, India. I am currently pursuing my major in Electrical Engineering and minors in Computer Science. My previous research projects include neural networks, device simulations and image processing. I am very interested in the fields of computer vision and robotics. I have been working on a project on autonomous fruit collecting robot.

2.What was your first impression of USC and MCL?

USC is a wonderful place and provides opportunities for all people invariant of their interests. It is a wonderful place where people can pursue their goals. The members in the lab are all very kind and willing to help others. I would like to thank all the members of MCLab for the hospitality shown towards me.

3.What is your further expectation of being an MCL member?

I am very happy to be selected into the Viterbi- India Program and come to USC, one of the leading institutions in the field of Engineering and Technology. I am also very pleased to join MCLab, and to have the opportunity to work with [...]

Five MCL members attended the Viterbi PhD hooding ceremony on Thursday, May 14, 2014, from 8:30-11:00 a.m. in the Bovard Auditorium. They were Sachin Chachada, Xiang Fu, Pang-Chang Lan, Sudeng Hu, and Joe Yuchieh Lin. Congratulations to them and their families for their accomplishments in completing their PhD program at USC.

Sachin Chachada received his B.E. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from S.R.K.N.E.C., RTM Nagpur University and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC). Since 2009, he has been a member in the Media Communications Lab at USC, participating in the fields of statistical signal processing, and machine learning with applications to image and audio analysis. His dissertation, entitled “Environmental Sound Recognition: Classification and Retrieval,” discusses the algorithms that can be used to advance general audio understanding and management. His work demonstrates superior performance of ensemble learning algorithm for environmental audio classification, with use of classical, contemporary and a new set of time-frequency features. His work also includes novel algorithms for environmental sound retrieval for a large database, with promising applications for audio content management.

Xiang Fu received his B.S. degree in Electronic Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), China in 2009, and his M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Computer Science, both from University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles in 2011 and 2014, respectively. Since 2011, he has been pursuing his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering with Media Communications Lab (MCL) at USC advised by Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo, and has been working on various research areas including image/video segmentation, spectral clustering, visual tracking, object recognition, video surveillance, and machine learning. His dissertation, entitled “An Information Fusion Approach to Visual Data Segmentation”, discusses feature fusions [...]

Face recognition has been studied and developed for over decades. However, the long distance face recognition accompanied with automatic alignment is still a challenging topic due to its distorted and quality-degraded environment. This problem is also known as Face Recognition at A Distance (FRAD), which is a common issue in video surveillance applications.

A solution to FRAD has been proposed by MCL PhD student, Chun-Ting Huang, visiting scholar from UESTC, Professor Zhengning Wang, and Professor C.-C. Jay Kuo.  The method called Two-Stage Alignment/Enhancement Filtering (TAEF) system consists of three main components: a cross-distance face alignment technique, a cross-environment face enhancement technique, and a two-stage filtering system. In the first stage, the given probe image is adjusted and examined in coarse-scale for eliminating unlikely candidates, and then the procedure is conducted for every individual probe/gallery image pair for higher accuracy at the second stage. The first rank recognition rates of the TAEF method are 100%, 100% and 97% for 60-, 100- and 150-meter visible-light images in the LDHF database, respectively.

This work has been accepted for publication in the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2015 Workshop on Biometrics held in Boston, June 11th, 2015.

After a highly competitive interview process, Ms. Zhenxia Zhou will be one of two MS students to join MCL in 2015 summer as interns. We conducted an interview with her about her previous experiences and future expectations.

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

My name is Zhenxia Zhou, an EE Master student at USC. I earned the Bachelor Degree of Engineering and Management from Nantong University in China in 2014.

Speaking of image processing, it was the undergraduate project “Color Medical Imaging Registration” that introduced me into this area, and fascinated me a lot. Before that, I had taken charge of two projects: “Wireless smart control system of Greenhouse” and “De-nosing of switch reluctance Machine”.

Other than course work, I was active in extracurricular professional activities, such as leading a team to win the second prize in the Mathematical and Computational Competition, and working as an Electrical Engineer intern for the Institute of Microelectronics of China Academy of Science (IMECAS) for two months.

Currently, I am working on a course project, to implement a “Baby face generator” on the DSP board under the guidance of Pro. Georgiou. I am getting more and more fascinated in image processing and computer vision and willing to learn more about them.

2. What was your first impression of USC and MCL?

The excellent ranking of the USC Viterbi Engineering School first attracted me. Later, I heard the history of signal and image processing research at USC; e.g., the well-known digital image “Lena” was first scanned here. It is truly exciting for young students working in this field to be a member of the Trojan family.

The first time I browsed MCL website, I was impressed by its large size [...]

Kevin Wang is a freshman in the Computer Engineering and Computer Science (CECS) Program at USC. He is fascinated by computer graphics and has strong curiosity about academic research. He joined Media Communications Las recently. The following is an interview with him about himself and his thoughts.

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself?

My name is Kevin Wang, a first year undergraduate in the USC CECS program. I am interested in the software engineering track of my major. I am currently in a preliminary stage of developing an app with a couple of other students. I also enjoy playing tennis and going adventures in LA.

2. What was your first impression of USC and Media Communications Lab?

As a freshman, I am open-minded to embrace various opportunities presented by USC. Since USC is a prominent research-focused school, I want to take advantage of it. The Media Communications Lab is ideal for me to get hands-on research experience. By working on graphics and visual quality assessment tasks, I will be able to get deeper understanding of computer science while participating in important research.

3. What makes you want to know more about research and decide to join Media Communications Lab?

In the very deep of my heart, I desire to conduct a research project of my own sometime in the near future. I want to hone my skills on discovering new possibilities in computer science. I decided to join Media Communications Lab because it provides the best opportunities to ease my way into research.

4. What do you want to learn from working with Media Communications Lab members?

I am interested in understanding methodologies behind conducting research in a professional field. As the first year student, I want to understand what it is [...]