In March 2015, MCLab has a new visiting scholar, Prof. Songbin Li. Prof. Li is Professor at Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Science, China. We are glad to have an interview with him, talking about his previous research experiences and future expectations at USC.

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and describe your previous research experience?

I come from the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Before joining IOA in 2012, I received my Ph.D. from the National Network New Media Engineering Research Center (3NMedia), Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Science in 2010 and then I worked as a post-doc in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University. My research focuses on multimedia signal processing especially on multimedia forensics and security, as well as steganography and steganalysis. I am also interested in creative technology related to network new media, such as computer animation and film special effects production technology.

2. What is your first impression of USC and MCLab?

USC is a world-famous university and the campus is very beautiful. USC is full of diversity, where students and faculties are from various countries and ethnic groups. As for MCLab, Prof. Kuo has, to a remarkable extent, a global reputation in multimedia technology area. Under his lead, the MCLab is vital and high-yielding of scientific papers. The students in MCLab are all very smart, enthusiastic and hard-working. I think they will make a difference in the future.

3. What is your future expectation and plan in MCLab? ​

I have several aims of my visit. First, I would like to join a certain subgroup related to steganography and steganalysis, aiming to make some contribution to MCLab. Second, I hope to continue the research on detection of information hiding in the low bit-rate speech stream, with the help from Prof. Kuo. Third, I would like to learn from Prof. Kuo about how to effectively supervise a big research group, including selecting research topics and motivating students. Furthermore, I hope that I can find some new research topics related to network new media.