In 2014 Fall semester, Chien-Yi Wang will become a new Ph.D. student in MCLab. Chien-Yi Wang received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 2013. He arrived at USC a month 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?

I have heard of USC in its great learning environment and plenty of resources. At first sight, the buildings in USC are amazing and beautiful. There are usually many trees and animals around the campus, bringing lots of energy and spirits. I also notice that there are always some comfortable benches and tables, accompanying with fabulous fountains, for people to study and chat outside. I am so excited and cannot wait to study in this wonderful campus.

As for MCLab, I think people here are really nice and friendly. Some senior students in the lab introduce many places in the campus for me, and try to help me to get used to the life in Los Angeles. I also got many assistances and advices from them in academy and living before I entered the school. It’s really great to become one of this big warm family.

Could you briefly describe your previous research experience?

In the last two years of my B.S. program, I joined the Wireless Communication Lab and initiated a research project on multimedia communication subject. I have studied the protocols of different wireless systems and learned how to use complex encoding technologies such as H.264 on video sources. I found it interesting to design some algorithms and implement them on the wireless driver. I finally proposed a scheme to improve the quality of the video transmission over Wi-Fi system, and conducted many experiments to compare the performance with other schemes.

What is your future expectation in MCLab?

Through previous research experiences, I found it interesting to do some experiments with multimedia. Therefore, I wish I could find challenging research topics on image processing and computer vision in the lab. It would be great to learn how to organize and solve difficult problems by my own. Besides, I wish to improve my programming skills so that I could implement my ideas and conduct experiments, which I think is a essential ability for my future research and career life. Moreover, I wish I could improve my English proficiency so that I could express my thoughts and ideas clearly to communicate with others very well. At last, I hope I could work well with other members in the lab and enjoy my PhD life in USC.