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Monday Morning Keynote, 8:40 - 9:40am, December 11, 2006
A Knowledge-Based Framework for High Content Screening of Multimedia Biological Data
Prof. Arif Ghafoor
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director, Distributed Multimedia Systems Laboratory
Short bio: Prof. Ghafoor received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan in 1976. He received his M.S., M.Phil and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 1977, 1980, and 1984 respectively. After his graduation he joined the faculty of the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Syracuse University, New York. In spring 1991, he joined the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN., where currently he is a Professor, and the Director of Distributed Multimedia Systems Laboratory. This laboratory is a modern research facility to conduct research in multimedia databases, distributed computing, and broadband multimedia communication. This facility has been funded by various government and private organizations, including the U.S. Dept. of Defense, the National Science Foundation, NYNEX Corporation, AT&T Foundation, IBM, Intel Corp., Siemens Research Corporation, Fuji Electric Company of Japan, among others. Dr. Ghafoor has been actively engaged in research areas related to parallel and distributed computing, and multimedia information systems. He has published over 130 technical papers in leading journals and conferences. He has been invited frequently to give seminars and tutorials at various leading IEEE and ACM conferences, including keynote speeches at the 13-th British National Conference on Databases (1995) and 1997 IEEE Workshop on Resource Management in Computer Systems and Networks . He has been consultant to GE, the DoD, and the UNDP. Dr. Ghafoor has served on various IEEE and ACM Conferences Program Committees. Currently, he is serving on the editorial boards of numerous journals including ACM/Springer Multimedia Systems Journal and the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Databases. He has served as a Guest/Co-Guest Editor for various special issues of numerous journals including ACM/Springer Multimedia Systems Journal. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, International Journal on Multimedia Tools and Applications, IEEE Journal on the Selected Areas in Communications and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. He has co-edited a book entitled "Multimedia Document Systems in Perspectives" (Kluwer Publisher), and has co-authored a book entitled "Semantic Models for Multimedia Database Searching and Browsing" (Kluwer Publisher).
Monday Reception Keynote, 6:30-7:30pm, December 11, 2006
The Power of Online Games & Advergaming
Zack Zeiler,
CEO & President, VPI.Net
Over the last several years online games, advergaming and advertainment have grown increasingly popular as a form of branded entertainment for all ages. Advertisers have responded by rushing to the market for advertainment as a whole, because it offers the opportunity for advertisers to communicate their brand messages in a new and innovative fashion. Using the entertainment vehicle of free online games or games to play after registration, advertisers are reaching consumers in engaging and innovative ways. This talk provides an overview on the history of online games, Advergaming and Advertainment along with an examination of this fast-developing industry, including, types of online games, revenue projections, current & future trends; and reviews some of the most popular types of online games as they pertain to Advergaming.
Short bio: ZACHARY S. ZEILER is the CEO and President of VPI.Net. Mr. Zeiler founded VPI.Net in 1995 and under his direction VPI.Net has established a reputation of successfully marrying proven marketing concepts with a unique blend of interactive design and programming in order to create groundbreaking and effective online initiatives that stretch the limits of the new media marketplace.
Mr. Zeiler has over 14 years of expertise and experience in the Internet industry and over 21 years of practical computing expertise. Mr. Zeiler regularly contributes to magazines, books, speaking engagements and legal periodicals about the Internet, technology, software, marketing online & offline, COPPA compliancy and much more.
Attendees and organizers alike often comment that Mr. Zeiler's presentation and knowledge are exciting, witty and engaging, drawing in the audience no matter what the topic. Mr. Zeiler humanizes the experience for his audience making the complex world of technology, the Internet and marketing very real, approachable and fun.
Mr. Zeiler has established long-term relationships by producing effective online initiatives for America Online (AOL), Dr. Phil, Time Warner, Hilary Duff, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Mark Burnett, CBS Paramount and many others.
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Tuesday Morning Keynote, 8:00 - 8:50am, December 12, 2006
Monitoring People and their Activities
Prof. Jake K. Aggarwal
Cullen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Computer and Vision Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
Recognizing human activity and interactions with the environment are important components of computer vision research today. The recent interest in monitoring and surveillance systems has heightened this interest. The applications of the ongoing research include personal assistants, patients monitoring, kinesiology and others. The understanding of human activity is a diverse and complex subject that includes tracking and modeling human activity, and representing video events at the semantic level. Its scope ranges from understanding the actions of an isolated person to understanding the actions and interactions of a crowd, or the interaction of persons with objects like pieces of luggage or cars.
At The University of Texas at Austin, we are pursuing a number of projects on human motion. Professor Aggarwal will present his research on modeling and recognition of human actions and interactions, and human and object interactions. The work includes the study of interactions at the gross level as well as at the detailed level. The two levels present different problems in terms of observation and analysis. At the gross level we model persons as blobs, and at the detailed level we conceptualize human actions in terms of an operational triplet ¡®agent-motion-target¡¯ similar to ¡®verb argument structure¡¯ in linguistics. We consider atomic actions, composite actions and interactions, and continued and recursive activities. In addition, we consider the interactions between a person and an object including climbing a fence. The issues considered in these problems will illustrate the richness and the difficulty associated with understanding human motion. Application of the above research to monitoring and surveillance will be discussed together with actual examples.
Short bio: Prof. Jake K. Aggarwal has served on the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin College of Engineering since 1964 and is currently a Cullen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Computer and Vision Research Center. His research interests include computer vision, pattern recognition and image processing focusing on human motion. A Fellow of IEEE since 1976, IAPR since 1998 and AAAS since 2005, he received the Senior Research Award of the American Society of Engineering Education in 1992, the 1996 Technical Achievement Award of the IEEE Computer Society and the graduate teaching award at The University of Texas at Austin in 1992.More recently, he is the recipient of the 2004 KSFU prize of the International Association for Pattern Recognition and the 2005 Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award of the IEEE. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and Golden Core member of IEEE Computer Society. He has authored and edited a number of books, chapters, proceedings of conferences, and papers.
Banquet Keynote, 7-10pm, December 12, 2006
The Success and Challenges of a Networked Home
Dr. Kumar Ramaswamy,
Vice President of Innovation and Chief Innovation Officer, Thomson Inc.
The rapid explosion of networked digital gadgets has opened up several new avenues of working and getting entertained in the home. Ethernet connectivity and wireless local area networks(WLANs) have helped make tremendous strides in achieving easy-to-use home networks for IP connectivity. Together with the support from PCs and devices with gateway functionality, new gadgets entering the home can now be networked, albeit with varying levels of difficulty. All this flexibility has, in turn, spawned several technical and practical challenges to building secure, robust and reliable home networks. Streaming multi-media content reliably around the home represents one of the most difficult challenges for home networking. This application probably presents the most significant economic potential for operators and is also technically the most challenging.
This talk will address some of the challenges including reliable delivery, security, ease of installation and use of networking technologies for delivering voice, data, video and mobility applications in the home.
Short bio: Dr. Kumar Ramaswamy is currently Vice President of Innovation and Chief Innovation Officer at Thomson Inc. Until August 2006, he managed the Corporate Research labs at Thomson, a 440 person organization with eight research labs. His current role involves working with executive management to identify and promote innovation within Thomson through a number of strategic initiatives.
Kumar joined Thomson in Indianapolis in 1993. Initially, as a Senior Member of Technical Staff, and then as Manager of the Future Communications Laboratory, Kumar was part of the team that was responsible for the development and deployment of several communication systems including the DIRECTV* satellite system, HDTV, advanced digital cable and wireless cable systems. He was also CTO of HomeFront DSL - a CLEC established in Indiana offering triple play including video-over-DSL. Kumar received a PhD in Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1993. He has 47 issued US patents, several international patents and has over 80 pending patent applications. He was awarded the Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer award in 2000 by the Eta Kappa Nu honor society.
Wednesday Morning Keynote, 8:00 - 8:50am, December 13, 2006
Past, Present and Future of Digital Video Compression and its Applications
Dr. Ajay Luthra,
Senior Director, Advanced Technology Group, Connected Home Solutions, Motorola Inc.
Short bio:Ajay Luthra received his B.E. (Hons) from BITS, Pilani, India in 1975, M.Tech. in Communications Engineering from IIT Delhi in 1977 and Ph.D. from Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania in 1981. From 1981 to 1984 he was a Senior Engineer at Interspec Inc., where he was involved in applications of Digital Signal and Image Processing for Bio-medical applications. From 1984 to 1995 he was at Tektronix Inc., where from 1985 - 1990 he was manager of Digital Signal and Picture Processing Group and from 1990 - 1995 he was Director of Communications / Video Systems Research Lab. He is currently a Senior Director in Advanced Technology Group at Connected Home Solutions, Motorola Inc., where he is involved in advanced development work in the areas of Digital Video Compression & Processing, Streaming Video, Interactive TV, Cable Head-End system design, Advanced Set Top Box architectures and IPTV.
He has been an active member of MPEG committee for more than twelve years where he has chaired several technical sub-groups and pioneered the MPEG-2 extensions for studio applications. He is currently an associate rapporteur/co-chair of Joint Video Team (JVT) consisting of ISO/MPEG and ITU-T/VCEG experts working on developing next generation of video coding standard known as MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC / H.264. He is also U.S.A. Head of Delegates (HoD) to MPEG. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (2000-2002) and also a Guest Editor for its Special Issues on H.264/AVC Video Coding Standard, July 2003 and Streaming Video, March 2001.
He holds 30 patents, has published more than 30 papers and has been a guest speaker in numerous conferences.
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