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Xue Wang, a recently graduated Ph.D. student from Media Communications Lab at USC, decides to continue her research work as a postdoctoral associate here with us. She is so happy to study with Professor Kuo and other lab members. Now we have an interview with her, talking about the change of roles between a Ph.D. student and a post-doc researcher and lifelong study plan.

Could you briefly describe yourself and your current research?

My research is an extension of the previous work on the objective evaluation of cataract surgical techniques using image processing and computer vision methods. The state-of-art surgeon evaluation tools primarily require human observers to fill out a grading questionnaire after viewing a video of the procedure, a technique that is subject to observer bias and variability. Therefore, it is hoped that our work could be extremely helpful in developing reliable computational analysis methods that can precisely and automatically identify quantitative and qualitative evaluation for surgical techniques.

Why do you choose to take a post-doc position and what’s your future plan?

I set up my career goal to become a faculty in the university when I started my Ph.D. at USC. I enjoy doing research and communicating with fellow workmates, and working as a post-doc is necessary step in the preparation for becoming faculty. To make this decision, I talked with different professors about the ongoing research work and future plan. Also, I got great help from Jing Zhang, one of our MCLab alumni, who is now pursuing her post-doc at Yale University. I’d apply for faculty position in future and I need to improve myself more. One aspect is about the research; I will enhance my work and try to seize any off-campus presentation opportunity [...]

In 2014 Fall semester, Junting Zhang becomes a new master student in MCLab. She received the B.S. degree in Communication Engineering from Xiamen University in 2014. Now we have an interview with her, talking about her background and her thoughts on USC and MCLab.

What were your first impression of USC and MCLab?

USC is famous for its culture diversity and top-notch academic achievements, and it is almost my dream school. I came from Xiamen University, which is also located in a coastal city, so I cannot help comparing these two universities. They both have charming campus landscapes and rich resources, but USC is more idyllic. I found adorable squirrels running through the crowd. During the welcome week, everybody kept saying the slogan “Fight on, Trojans! “, which really cheered me up. I am looking forward to starting a brand new journey here.

As for MCL, Professor Kuo and senior students are really nice and warm-hearted. They make MCL like a home for me. They also helped me a lot to adapt to the new environment, especially Yuzhuo and Xiaqing. I feel lucky to join this group. I have chatted with several group members.  Everyone is self-motivated and experienced in research. I am sure that I will gain tons of hands-on experience and make great friends here.

Could you briefly describe your previous research experience?

When I was an undergraduate student, I majored in communications. I took part in the National Innovation Training Program, working on haze removal for blurred images and surveillance videos. My undergraduate thesis is about LDPC codes decoding algorithm design and analysis over a partial response channel, which is the model of magnetic recording system.

What is your future expectation in MCLab?

My background matches MCL perfectly. [...]

In 2014 Fall semester, Wei-Chih Hung will become a new Ph.D. student in MCLab. He received his B.S. and M.S. degree, both in electrical engineering, from the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan in 2011 and 2013, respectively. He arrived at USC one week ago, and now we have an interview with him, talking about his background and his thoughts on USC and MCLab.

What were your first impression of USC and MCLab?
USC definitely has a wonderful campus view. The buildings are beautiful and consistent in style. There are trees and grass yards everywhere, and of course I notice the famous fountains in the campus. After the first look on the USC campus, I am so excited that I can pursue my degree in this wonderful place.
As for MCLab, my first impression is that it is really like a big family. People in here are really friendly and willing to help as well as share their own experience, either in academy and living. I have received lots of help since I decided to join MCLab, especially from Professor Kuo, Brian and Joe.

Could you briefly describe your previous research experience?
In the last 2 years of my B.S. program, I was interested in various areas, such as wireless communication, machine learning, video coding, and computer graphics. Since my M.S. program, my research topic mainly focuses on wireless video transmission. I have worked on two projects on wireless video transmission. Both of them tried to adaptively improve video quality over wireless channel with different channel quality. But one tries to improve video quality with video codec parameter selection, and the other proposed a cross-layer video decoding algorithm, exploiting the natural information redundancy with video sequence.

What is [...]

MCLab has a new Ph.D student, Siyang Li. Let’s give Siyang a warm welcome! She received B.S. degree from the University of Hong Kong this June. She decided to join USC MCLab to pursue her Ph.D degree beginning from this Fall semester. She was interviewed by MCLab.

What were your first impression of USC and our lab?

USC has a large and beautiful campus. Viterbi School is really a big family and I have met a lot of new students during my first week here. The volunteers were so nice and helpful that I got the paperwork done easily.

MCLab is also a big family and the group mates are friendly and helpful. Yuzhuo helped with housing issues and Sudeng gave me information about academic work. I really appreciate that. Prof. Kuo emphasized teamwork in the first meeting, which I found impressive. I chatted with some group mates and I think we are going to take advantage of a large group – seeking advice from each other and exchanging ideas.

Could you talk about your research interest?

At present, I think I still keep an open mind in the field of computer vision. I would love to try different topics in the first few months and it is my honor to have Sudeng as my mentor. The starting point would be security enhancement in video surveillance. Currently video surveillance is mainly used for investigation after accidents. However, if the computer can automatically detect events such as fighting or shooting, and inform the security staff on time, accidents, especially fatalities may be prevented. Therefore, at the very beginning, I will mainly focus on the event detection and maybe we will build the database with the video provided by USC surveillance [...]

The short summer course on “Entrepreneurship” offered by Professor Kuo is coming to an end. In order to acquire some feedbacks, we had some random interviews with students who took the course this afternoon .

Xue Wang, a recently graduated PhD student from MCL, still hold an enormouse passion and persistency in attending this course. On her intuitive in taking this course, she said,  “This class lets me learn new things, and think in a different way. As a graduate student researcher, I might have been familiar with and accustomed to a fixed pattern or mode of studying and thinking, which may limit my horizon and lead to incomprehensive understanding of the world.” And the course surely benefits her a lot in enlightening the entrepreneurship in a whole different way: “This short course guides me to look into a different domain and opens my mind. It attracts me by exploring the story beneath that surface, for example, the story behind a successful product. Through the class, I also learn how an outstanding company builds the vision of the future on base of innovation, cooperation, and management, in order to keep it sticking out from the crowd of competitors. It is, viewed from other perspective, a part of the ‘story’ unknown to most clients, but of great value worth studying as being ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’. “She said.

Along with the common MCL members in group, there is another “special” student , Chuqiao Xu, a summer internship student from Tsinghua University.

And the following are some short Q&A with her during the interview:

Why did you want to take this course?
“Because I want to know more about entrepreneurship and industry, I think the knowledge is really necessary.”

What’s the [...]