ACM MM2009 Keynotes

Multimedia Content Analysis and Search: New perspectives and approaches (PPT)

Abstract: After 15 years of extensive research, multimedia retrieval has finally come to its prime time when everything becomes accessible on the web. However, web search provides both a new paradigm and a new challenge to the multimedia retrieval research community. It calls for a rethinking of the traditional content-based approaches, especially in how to make use of the massive yet noisy meta data associated with the web pages and links. In this talk, we will first review some familiar approaches in content-based multimedia retrieval. Then, we will present a set of efforts in web multimedia search to illustrate interesting new thoughts that potentially will lead to new breakthroughs in multimedia search and stimulate new research ideas.

Biography: Dr. Hong-Jiang Zhang is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Microsoft China Research and Development Group (CRD) and Managing Director of the Microsoft Advanced Technology Center (ATC). In his duals role, Dr. Zhang helps to chart Microsoft's research and development agenda including identifying the needs of emerging markets, developing products and solutions for China, and developing China R&D operation into a key global research, innovation and product development base for Microsoft.

Dr. Zhang was the Assistant Managing Director of Microsoft Research (MSR) Asia, where he led efforts to research and transfer cutting edge technologies to Microsoft products in areas such as Natural Language Computing, Media Computing, Data Mining and Web Search, and Distributed Systems. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Zhang was with Hewlett-Packard Labs at Palo Alto, CA, where he was a research manager. He also worked at the Institute of Systems Science, National University of Singapore.

As an IEEE Fellow and ACM Fellow, Dr. Zhang is well recognized for his leadership in media computing and his pioneering work in video and image content analysis, search and browsing. He is also the winner of 2008 Asian American Engineers of the Year.He holds over 60 US patents and has authored four books, over 350 scientific papers. He served as the Editor in Chief of IEEE Transaction on Multimedia from 2005 to 2008.

Dr. Zhang received a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Denmark, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Zhengzhou University, China, both in Electrical Engineering.

Quality of Multimedia Experience: Past, Present and Future (PPT)

Abstract: The field of multimedia is maturing and one of the positive results of this fact is the increase in the quality of offered products and services. Nowadays, there is no longer only a question of which features are included in a multimedia product or service, but also how well such features are addressed, and even more importantly, what impact they have on end-users. The era of user-centric multimedia has already begun, where quality plays a center role. But what is meant by quality in multimedia services and products, how to measure it, and once measured, how to improve it?
Until recently, Quality of Service (QoS) was how the issue of quality was addressed in multimedia systems.
QoS metrics have been either based on system components characteristics not taking into account of human perception, or based on simplified mono-modal models of human sensory system. More recently, the notion of Quality of Experience has brought a new and fresh way to look at the notion of quality in multimedia systems.
While QoS intends to capture the system-related characteristics, QoE involves aspects related to not only subjective perception, but also user behavior and needs, appropriateness, context, and usability of the delivered content.
This talk starts with defining what is Quality of Experience. It then provides an overview of state of the art in Quality of Experience for multimedia systems, and will conclude with challenges and trends that still need to be addressed.

Biography: Touradj EBRAHIMI received his M.Sc. and Ph.D., both in Electrical Engineering, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1989 and 1992 respectively. In 1993, he was a research engineer at the Corporate Research Laboratories of Sony Corporation in Tokyo, where he conducted research on advanced video compression techniques for storage applications. In 1994, he served as a research consultant at AT&T Bell Laboratories working on very low bitrate video coding. He is currently Professor at EPFL heading its Multimedia Signal Processing Group. He is also an adjunct Professor in the Center of Quantifiable Quality of Service at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Prof. Ebrahimi has been the recipient of various distinctions and awards, such as the IEEE and Swiss national ASE award, the SNF-PROFILE grant for advanced researchers, Four ISO-Certificates for key contributions to MPEG-4 and JPEG 2000, and the best paper award of IEEE Trans. on Consumer Electronics . He became a Fellow of the international society for optical engineering (SPIE) in 2003. Prof. Ebrahimi has initiated more than two dozen National, European and International cooperation projects with leading companies and research institutes around the world. He is also the head of the Swiss delegation to MPEG, JPEG and SC29, and acts as the Chairman of Advisory Group on Management in SC29. He is a co-founder of Genista SA, a high-tech start-up company in the field of multimedia quality metrics. In 2002, he founded Emitall SA, start-up active in the area of media security and surveillance. In 2005, he founded EMITALL Surveillance SA, a start-up active in the field of privacy and protection. He is or has been associate Editor with various IEEE, SPIE, and EURASIP journals, such as IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, IEEE Trans. on Multimedia, EURASIP Image Communication Journal, EURASIP Journal of Applied Signal Processing, SPIE Optical Engineering Magazine. Prof. Ebrahimi is a member of Scientific Advisory Board of various start-up and established companies in the general field of Information Technology. He has served as Scientific Expert and Evaluator for Research Funding Agencies such as those of European Commission, The Greek Ministry of Development, The Austrian National Foundation for Scientific Research, The Portuguese Science Foundation, as well as a number of Venture Capital Companies active in the field of Information Technologies and Communication Systems. His research interests include still, moving, and 3D image processing and coding, visual information security (rights protection, watermarking, authentication, data integrity, steganography), new media, and human computer interfaces (smart vision, brain computer interface).

He is the author or the co-author of more than 200 research publications, and holds 14 patents.