News

Seven MCL members attended the Viterbi PhD hooding ceremony on Thursday, May 12, 2016, from 8:30-11:00 a.m. in the Bovard Auditorium. They were Young Ju Jeong, Xiaqing Pan, Chen Chen, Shangwen Li, Jian Li, Chun-Ting Huang  and Hao Xu. Congratulations to them and their families for their accomplishments in completing their PhD program at USC.

Ms. Young Ju Jeong joined the MCL in 2005 Fall firstly as a MS student and then a PhD student. Young Ju took a leave of absence, returned to Korea and worked as a research engineer in the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) in 2007 August. She has resumed her PhD program remotely since two years ago by taking courses through DEN and communicating with Professor Kuo on her research progress.Her dissertation title is “Autostereoscopic 3D Display Rendering from Stereo Sequences”.

Xiaqing Pan received his B.S. degree in University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST), Shanghai, China in 2010 and M.S.E.E. degree in USC, Los Angeles, U.S.A. in 2012. He joined MCL in 2012 Fall. His research interests include 3-D mesh classification and retrieval, super-resolution and computer vision.

Chen Chen received his bachelor degree from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecoms and earned his M.S. at the University of Southern California. In Prof. Kuo’s Media and Creative Lab, he focuses on computer vision research topics.

Jian Li received his B.S. degree from department of Electronic Science and Technology at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2009. He obtained his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California (USC) in 2011. He is currently pursuing PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at USC. He is a Research Assistant at Media Communications Lab advised by Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo. His [...]

MCL is participating in the USC/VSoE safety and Security Initiative Project to develop advanced video surveillance programs using a CNN-based object detection algorithm. MCL director, Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo, proposed a plan for introducing a robust and accurate detection, tracking and recognition algorithm into the existing USC Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) surveillance infrastructure. Two MCL PhD students, Hao Xu and Eddy Wu, will be developing and implementing the proposed system. One master intern student, Terna Kpamber, has also been assigned to the project to implement the front-end user interface.

The proposed system includes three functionalities. First, the visual data extracted from the DPS cameras will be processed and the metadata (car type, color, etc.) will be extracted out of the available video footage. Second, the metadata will be archived, organized, and utilized to determine the trajectory of the detected vehicle. Third, the vehicle behavior can be retrieved based on its trajectory. The MCL team appreciates the prompt assistance from the USC DPS officers in providing training data and validating the algorithm.

Congratulations to Professor C.-C. Jay Kuo, MCL Director, for receiving the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching at the 35th Annual Academic Honors Convocation held in on April 12, 2016, in Town and Gown. The citation for Professor Kuo’s achievements in winning the award is repeated below.

“C.-C. Jay Kuo evinces all of the hallmarks of a truly exceptional teacher—an enlivening passion for his work, a genuine interest in seeing others succeed, and a powerful rapport with his students. His friendly, enthusiastic teaching style, and deep knowledge of signal, media, and information processing theory and applications, make his courses some of the most popular in the electrical engineering program. He regularly draws more than 100 graduate students for these courses, usually in multiple sections.

Professor Kuo emphasizes problem solving through hands‐on experience, enabling his students to combine mathematical theory and computational algorithms with real-world applications. His extraordinary reputation is tantamount to his many achievements as a scholar and researcher. He is the author or co‐author of more than 1,000 published papers and a dozen books.

During his 25 years as a member of the USC faculty, Professor Kuo has advised 125 Ph.D. students and supervised more than two dozen post‐doctoral fellows, ranking him first among the top 50 advisors in the Mathematics Genealogy Project, which compiles information on prominent mathematicians across the world. Several former students have earned important research or leadership positions in academia and the engineering industries. Their successes speak volumes about the long-lasting and powerful impact of Professor Kuo’s superb mentorship.

For his unparalleled expertise in the field of engineering, and the profound wisdom and generosity he brings to his work as an educator, the University of Southern California is proud to honor Professor [...]

Siyang Li, a PhD student in MCLab, obtained an intern offer from Google. Congratulations! We have an interview with her about internship hunting.

What is the normal intern hiring procedure and how did you prepare for it?

For internship in big tech companies, usually we can apply online or through internal referral. If the resume review goes well, we can proceed to phone interviews, solving some programming problems. That definitely requires a lot of practice. I spent several months on it last year. After passing the phone interviews, there are team matching interviews and we need to find out the most suitable team to work with. Good communication skills would help. Sometimes, you have to go through several matching interviews before getting an offer.
I did an intern last year at Google and this year I get a returning offer, which is a lot easier as long as one performs well in previous interns.

How was it like working at Google?

My colleagues were quite helpful. My host was always happy to answer any question and I did ask a lot. The working environment was also quite relaxing. You can get free meals and snacks every day. There are also gyms and video game rooms. Now those facilities become a standard in software industry but I think it was Google who started it.

Any suggestions for your fellows?

I think PhD students should be careful about team matching when searching interns. Working on a project closely related the research topic would be an ideal situation; otherwise, it is better to think twice before accepting an offer. Of course, this strategy increases the risk of not getting an offer, so I would suggest starting intern hunting early. Starting early means more [...]

Chen Chen, a USC graduate, recently obtained an internship offer from Facebook. Congratulations!

Chen received his bachelor degree from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecoms and earned his M.S. at the University of Southern California. He focuses on computer vision research topics in  MCL.  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 studies in MCL build me a solid understanding of the techniques in my field. And I learned how to solve problems from proposals to conclusions independently. The base knowledge and skills helped my to solve new problems during interviews. In addition, MCL provided many opportunities for me to acquire a broad and general view of technologies in Computer Vision and Machine Learning. By attending group seminars and having research discussions with other students in our group, I learned many popular and interest topics and problems, which made me impressive in interviews. Finally, I got many chances in industrial projects in MCL, where I worked on cutting edge industrial technologies. The experience made me competitive for industrial jobs that need industrial job experiences other than research experiences.

2.  What makes you stand out among other candidates applying for the same position?
Since the positions I was targeting at need skills and spirits in dealing with new problems with innovations, I presented advantages over candidates that did not have relevant experiences. Besides, comparing to candidates who also have research experiences, I think our group members are quite unique and competitive in the sense of width of knowledge and skills of presentation. The strict training in MCL stands me out for the same position.

3. Do you have any suggestions to current graduate students? (e.g. interview strategy and preparation, etc.)

First, I recommend [...]