- Complete abstract of the talk by Dr. Bruce Croft: "Overview of
Information Retrieval Research at University of Massachusetts"
- Complete abstract of the talk by Dr. Tom Little and Gulrukh Ahanger
at Boston University Multimedia Communications Laboratory:
"Structure-Based News Video Composition and Customization"
- Complete list of panelists for discussion on "Future
Multimedia/Hypermedia Research and Development", including
- Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Senior Principal Engineer,
The MITRE Corporation
- Dr. Georges Grinstein, Professor of Computer Science and
Director of Institute for Visualization and Perception Research,
University of Massachusetts at Lowell
- Dr. Nabil R. Adam, Professor of Computers Information Systems
and Director of the Center for Information Management,
Integration and Connectivity (CIMIC), Rutgers University
- Dr. Maximilian Ott, Senior Research Staff Member, NEC
CCRL-Princeton, NJ
The multi-disciplined panelists will address their points of
view from various aspects, including databases, scalability,
computer-human interaction, visualization, applications
in digital libraries, copyright, communication, and
system architectures.
The attendance is free (sponsored by CCRL, NEC USA Inc.) with advance
registration through email by October 27, 1997 (Monday). Limited seating
is available through on-site registration. This CFP includes the forum
program and the registration form. We encourage students' participation
to learn current research & development activities and future direction
in this area.
-------------------------
******************************************************
* *
* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION *
* http://www.ccrl.neclab.com/forum97/ *
* *
******************************************************
Forum on Multimedia/Hypermedia Research & Development
Sponsored by
C&C Research Laboratories
NEC USA Inc.
8:00AM~17:30PM
Oct. 31, 1997, Friday
Bartos Theater
MIT Media Laboratory, Building E15, Room 070
20 Ames Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
-- Directions to the Media Lab may be found on-line at
http://casr.www.media.mit.edu/groups/casr/directions.html
Talks contributed by the following organizations:
Boston University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MITRE Corporation
NEC USA Inc., C&C Research Laboratories - Princeton, NJ
NEC USA Inc., C&C Research Laboratories - San Jose, CA
Northeastern University
Rutgers University
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
****************
* Forum Theme: *
****************
Effective Hypermedia Communication -
Current Technologies, Promising Research Issues, and
Future Applications for Better Human Communication
The role of hypermedia is expanding. From its origin as an information
and retrieval medium, hypermedia is moving toward a dynamic means for
human communication and generator of new ideas.
Users and researchers are at the forefront of this new frontier. While
we are experiencing euphoria at the popularity of the World Wide Web,
we realize that we are facing the limitations of today's technology.
This meeting is to exchange experiences and explore new ideas and pursue
promising research areas to develop future applications.
*************
* Program: *
*************
8:00~8:15 Welcome: Yoshinori Hara, Senior Research Manager, NEC CCRL-
San Jose
8:15~9:15: Invited talk: "Affective Computing": Dr. Rosalind W. Picard,
Professor of Media Technology, MIT Media Lab
Abstract: Emotions are a natural and significant part of human
interaction; moreover, recent neurological evidence indicates that
emotions are not a luxury, but play a critical role in intelligent
and rational decision-making. Whether used to indicate like/dislike
or interest/disinterest, emotion plays a key role in multimedia
information retrieval, user-preference modeling, and human-computer
interaction. Affective computing is computing that relates to,
arises from, or deliberately influences emotions. The focus of this
research is on giving computers the ability to recognize, express,
and have emotions. An example is computers (or other "smart things")
that detect the interest, frustration, or pleasure of their user.
* Dr. Rosalind W. Picard received her Sc.D. in EECS from MIT, 1991.
She has been an NEC Development Professor of Computers and
Communications with MIT since 1992 and an Associate Professor of
Media Technology since 1995. Her research interests include
Affective Computing (newest area), Texture and Pattern Modeling,
and Video and Image Libraries: Browsing, Retrieval, and Annotation.
9:15~9:30 Coffee Break
9:30~10:30 - "Overview of Information Retrieval Research at University of
Massachusetts": Dr. W. Bruce Croft, Professor of Computer Science
and Director of Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval,
ACM Fellow
Abstract: The NSF Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval at
the University of Massachusetts, Amherst is involved in a wide
range of research addressing the problems of access in large,
distributed, heterogeneous, and multimedia information
information environments. I will present an overview of this
research with some examples from specific projects such as
the collaboration with the Patent and Trademark Office.
* W. Bruce Croft is a Professor in the Department of Computer
Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, which he
joined in 1979. In 1992, he became the Director of the NSF
State/Industry/University Collaborative Research Center for
Intelligent Information Retrieval, which combines basic research
with technology transfer to a variety of government and industry
partners.
His research interests are in formal models of retrieval, text
representation techniques, the design and implementation of
retrieval and filtering systems, and user interfaces. He has
published more than 100 articles on these subjects. This research
is also being used in a number of operational systems and digital
library applications, such as WESTLAW, Infoseek, THOMAS,
American Memory, and the White House library. Dr. Croft was
Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Information
Retrieval from 1987 to 1991. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of
the ACM Transactions on Information Systems and an Associate Editor
for Information Processing and Management. He has served on
numerous program committees and has been involved in the
organization of many workshops and conferences. He has received
2 awards from the information industry for his research
contributions, and is an ACM Fellow. He received the B.Sc.(Honours)
degree in 1973, and an M.Sc. in Computer Science in 1974 from
Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His Ph.D. in
Computer Science was from the University of Cambridge, England
in 1979.
10:30~11:30 - "Multimedia/Hypermedia Research at MITRE":
Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Senior Principal Engineer,
MITRE Corporation, National Intelligence Division
* Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham is a Senior Principal Engineer with
the MITRE Corporation's National Intelligence Division and is a
strategic technology area leader in the Advanced Information
Systems Center where she leads the data and information management
section. She also leads the Corporate Initiative on Evolvable
Interoperable Information Systems. She is currently working on
real-time database management for command and control applications,
massive multimedia database management for intelligence
applications, data mining/knowledge discovery related to data
security, and distributed object management technology. She is
also a Co-Director of MITRE's Database Specialty Group.
Dr. Thuraisingham has an M.S. degree in Computer Science from
the University of Minnesota, M.Sc degree in Mathematical Logic
from the University of Bristol, U.K., and a Ph.D. degree in
Computability Theory from the University of Wales, Swansea, U.K.
She is a member of ACM, IEEE Computer Society, the British
Computer Society, and AFCEA.
- "Broadcast News Navigator - content based video access Technology
and Development Experience": Andrew E. Merlino, Jr.,
Lead Database Technology Software Engineer, MITRE Corporation,
Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems
Abstract: Content based video access is a requirement for several
important applications including video teleconference archiving,
video mail access, and individualized video news program
generation. At The MITRE Corporation, we have developed
techniques in our Multimedia Computing program to automatically
capture, annotate, segment, summarize and visualize stories from
a broadcast news video corpora (e.g., Jim Lehrer News Hour TM,
CNN PrimeNews TM, ABC World News Tonight TM). We have measured the
precision and recall performance of our techniques for both story
segmentation and proper name extraction using an information
retrieval inspired evaluation methodology. Our system, based on a
foundation of commercial relational database and video server
technology, includes both a Broadcast News Editor (BNE) system
and an associated video viewer, Broadcast News Navigator (BNN).
Within the Broadcast News Editor, we perform video (e.g., Black
Frame, Logo, Anchor booth, Reporter Scene Recognition), audio
(e.g., Silence Detection, Speaker Change), and closed caption
(e.g. proper name extraction and token detection) analysis. We
process these correlated detections through an FSM to discover
broadcast, commercial and story segments. A summarization, gist,
theme and key frame is generated from each story segment. With
this information in our multimedia database, the web based BNN
user can perform queries to view multimedia results as well as
perform trend analysis queries. Currently, we are evaluating the
integration of speech transcription tools as well as other signal
processing techniques into our system.
During the talk, the speaker will discuss the evaluation techniques
and results that were used during the development of this system.
The speaker will also give a live demonstration of the system that
contains over a years worth of news from various broadcast
agencies.
* Andrew E. Merlino received his Master's degree in Computer
Systems Engineering from Northeastern University in 1989 and a
BS degree from University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1985. He
has been a Lead Database Technology Software Engineer for
The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA, Center for Integrated
Intelligence Systems, since 1993. He is leading projects on BNN,
Special Security Replicated PC Database, Air Force Communications
tracking Relational and CAD Database System. Before joining MITRE,
he worked with Raytheon Company, Tewksbury, MA as a Senior
Engineer from 1984 to 1993.
11:30~12:00 - "Overview of Hypermedia Research at NEC, CCRL-San Jose":
Yoshinori Hara, Senior Research Manager
Abstract: At NEC, CCRL-San Jose, we have been conducting research
and development on high level authoring, augmentation, and query
tools and systems as key components for next generation hypermedia
environment. Integrating hypermedia functionalities with media
contents improves accessibility and makes hypermedia more effective
media for human communication. Prototype systems, such as Anecdote
(Multimedia Storyboarding), SEMCOG/IFQ (Multimedia databases/query
interface), COIR (Content-Oriented Image Retrieval), and AMORE
(Multimedia Web Search Engine), have contributed to
hypermedia/multimedia research. This talk will be concluded with
Q&A with researchers of SEMCOG/IFQ Project (Dr. Wen-Syan Li) and
AMORE Project (Dr. Sougata Mukherjea), Research Staff Members of
NEC, CCRL-San Jose.
12:00~13:00 Lunch
13:00~14:00 - "Overview of Research at Multimedia Communications Laboratory at
Boston University": Dr. Tom Little, Professor of Electrical and
Computer Engineering
* Professor Thomas D.C. Little is an associate professor in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston
University. He is director of the Multimedia Communications Lab
at Boston University where he is involved in the the development
of enabling technologies and applications for interactive
multimedia systems. Dr. Little received the BS degree in biomedical
engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1983, and
the MS degree in electrical engineering and Ph.D. degree in
computer engineering from Syracuse University in 1989 and 1991.
He is a Senior member of the IEEE, a member of the IEEE Computer
and Communications Societies and a member of the Association for
Computing Machinery. He serves on the editorial boards of IEEE
Multimedia and ACM/Springer Multimedia Systems and on various
program committees for the ACM and IEEE.
- "Structure-Based News Video Composition and Customization":
Gulrukh Ahanger, Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department
Abstract: Content-based techniques are commonly used for the
composition of information in video production. In addition to these
techniques, we use domain-specific structural information to achieve
cohesive composition of video. Structure is represented by a grammar
characterizing valid compositions in the application domain and is
used with a set of constraints to achieve production.
The results are applied to the production of news items based on
metadata associated with digitized broadcast news originating from
multiple newsfeeds. The grammar for news composition, the
constraints on composition, and the assumptions used are
considered in this presentation. A video-based demonstration will
be given showing early results of this work.
* Gulrukh Ahanger is a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering at Boston University. She is currently a
research assistant in the Multimedia Communications Laboratory.
Her research interests include multimedia databases and
visual query systems for video.
Ms. Ahanger received her BE degree in Electronics and Communications
Engineering from the Regional Engineering College, Srinagar, India in
1988 and the MS degree in Systems Engineering from Boston University
in 1993. She consulted as a software engineer for Siemens Medical
Electronics, Danvers, Massachusetts from May 1992 to January 1993.
She also interned at Siemens Corporate Research Inc. during the
summer of 1993 where she developed a prototype video query
system. Currently she is involved in a project for fast access
to multimedia information for applications in distance learning
and customized-news-service delivery.
14:00~15:00 - "Multimedia/Hypermedia Research at Northeastern Univ":
Dr. Patrick Wang, Professor of Computer Science and IAPR Fellow
- "Learning, Representation, Understanding and Recognition - An
Intelligent Approach in Multimedia/Hypermedia Environment":
Dr. Patrick Wang, Professor of Computer Science and IAPR Fellow
Abstract: How do people learn and recognize things? These amazing
capabilities have been taken for granted for years. Until recently,
when one tries to use computers or machines to do things like
recognizing handwritten characters, it becomes clear that such
seemingly trivial tasks by human being turn out extremely difficult,
if not impossible, by mechanical means such as computers. After
decades of rigorous attacks, such research is still as fresh as
ever, and such mystery as for how human beings can do it remains
largely unknown. In a sense, up to date, "human brain"
is still the "smartest" or the "most intelligent" mechanism than
any computer can provide. In a way, the study of pattern recognition
and artificial intelligence techniques has attracted more and more
interests and attention. This talk intends to get some inside views
of PR research in Multimedia/Hypermedia environment using AI
techniques at NU. We will discuss various methodologies, and
applications to represent, learn, understand and recognize 3D
objects and Chinese words, one of the most widely used, complicated
and difficult language in the world.
* Professor Patrick S.P.Wang is tenured full professor of computer
science at College of Computer Science of Northeastern University.
He is IAPR (Int. Assoc. of Pattern Recognition) Fellow and
cofounding chief editor of IJPRAI (Int. J. of Pattern Recognition
and Artificial Intelligence) and WSP MPAI Book Series (with
Switzerland's Prof. Horst Bunke). In Fall 1996, Dr. Wang has been
invited to give seminars as Otto-Von-Guericke Distinguished Guest
Professor at the University of Magdeburg (near Berlin) of
Deutschland (Germany). Dr. Wang has been Visiting Scientist at
MIT AI Lab for one year from 1989-1990, and Research Consultant at
MIT Sloan School since 1990, as well as adjunct faculty of Computer
Science at Harvard University Extension School since 1985. For the
past ten years, he has been visiting professor and invited to
give lectures in many countries in America, Asia and Europe
including Germany, Canada, France, Japan, Italy, Austria,
Switzerland, China (both Taiwan and Mainland), South Korea,
Singapore, Hongkong, Netherlands, Belgium, Israel, and USA.
- "The Contents of Graphics in Documents -- Creation, Analysis,
and Use": Dr. Robert P. Futrelle, Professor of Computer Science
Abstract: Informational technical documents, e.g., research
articles in science, engineering, and medicine, are replete with
graphics of all types. Contemporary information systems have
done very little to exploit the wealth of important information
that is contained in this graphics modality. Our work has first
focused on the automated parsing of diagrams to extract the
information they contain. We describe efficient methods we have
implemented for this that can, in principle, parse all the diagrams
published in the biomedical literature in real time (approx. 2M
each year) using a single Macintosh processor. (This assumes that
the diagrams would be available in vectorized form, not as raster
data.) We have also implemented a system for integrating
knowledge sections of text that discuss the material in a particular
diagram. Finally, we describe work we are beginning to develop
Intelligent Authoring Systems for text and graphics that will allow
an author to write papers that include knowledge content from the
outset, thus avoiding the complex and error-prone process of
attempting to reconstruct the knowledge in a paper after it is
published. Once knowledge representations of graphics are created
by authoring or analysis, they can be exploited for conceptual
document retrieval, summarization, and more.
* Dr. Futrelle is an Associate Professor of Computer Science in the
College of Computer Science at Northeastern University. He received
his S.B. and Ph.D. degrees in theoretical physics from MIT. After
working in industry, he switched to biology and developed the
Galatea system for the interactive analysis of (biological) motion
pictures in the early 70s, at the University of Chicago. He was on
the Life Sciences faculty at the U. of Illinois from 1975-1985,
before moving to Northeastern. In 1989 he founded and still heads
the Biological Knowledge Laboratory at Northeastern, which focuses
on analyzing and building knowledge bases from the scientific
literature, for online conceptual retrieval. The work gives equal
attention to the text and the graphics in documents. The major
accomplishment of the lab to date is the development of efficient
strategies and tools for parsing a wide variety of diagrams.
Similar work on natural language is ongoing.
- "Migration in World History CD-ROM: Research and Pedagogy of
Teaching Materials": Dr. Patrick Manning, Professor in History
and African-American Studies
Abstract: This CD-ROM for introductory college history courses,
to be released in a year, is supported by The Annenberg/CPB Project.
It links 400 documents in various media with 13 unit narratives,
and to five types of interactive exercises enabling users to
conduct major types of historical analysis. The product is
distinctive because it leads users to develop and reformulate
interpretations, rather than seek to locate right and wrong answers.
The navigational system goes beyond localized hyperlinks and
emphasizes a comprehensive, user-directed navigational tool.
Project organization is distinctive because of its heavy emphasis
on research (work by doctoral students to produce diverse yet
coherent content) and on conceptual design (to develop the
high-level pedagogy of the analyses). Research, conceptual design,
graphic design and programming groups interact at each stage of
production. Our experience leads us to believe that analogous
projects, using multimedia to bring advances in the logic of
teaching and learning, can move forth if sufficient research and
design effort is linked to available multimedia technology. And we
believe that universities such as Northeastern provide a good
environment for producing such innovative teaching materials. The
next project of our group is two CD-ROMs on Technology in World
History.
* Patrick Manning, Professor of History and African-American Studies
at Northeastern University, has published four books in African and
Atlantic history. At Northeastern, Manning led in the development
of a doctoral program and a major center in the study of world
history. Since 1995, the World History Center has been developing
the technology and pedagogy of teaching world history through
multimedia, focusing initially on a course-sized CD-ROM, "Migration
in Modern World History." To be released in late 1998, it is
produced in collaboration with WGBH Educational Foundation, with
support from The Annenberg/CPB Project. Initial work has
begun on "Technology in World History," and subsequent work will
address religion and government in world history.
15:00~15:15 Coffee Break
15:15~16:30 Panel discussion on Multimedia/Hypermedia Future Research and
Development Directions:
The panel will discuss future direction of multimedia/hypermedia
research and development for better human communication. The
multi-disciplined panelists will address their points of view from
various aspects, including databases, scalability, computer-human
interaction, visualization, applications in digital libraries,
copyright, communication, and system architecture.
Mediator: Dr. Wen-Syan Li, NEC CCRL-San Jose
Panelists:
o Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Senior Principal Engineer,
The MITRE Corporation
* Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham is a Senior Principal Engineer with
the MITRE Corporation's National Intelligence Division and is a
strategic technology area leader in the Advanced Information
Systems Center where she leads the data and information management
section. She also leads the Corporate Initiative on Evolvable
Interoperable Information Systems. She is currently working on
real-time database management for command and control applications,
massive multimedia database management for intelligence
applications, data mining/knowledge discovery related to data
security, and distributed object management technology. She is
also a Co-Director of MITRE's Database Specialty Group.
Dr. Thuraisingham has an M.S. degree in Computer Science from
the University of Minnesota, M.Sc degree in Mathematical Logic
from the University of Bristol, U.K., and a Ph.D. degree in
Computability Theory from the University of Wales, Swansea, U.K.
She is a member of ACM, IEEE Computer Society, the British
Computer Society, and AFCEA.
o Dr. Georges Grinstein, Professor of Computer Science and Director
of Institute for Visualization and Perception Research,
University of Massachusetts at Lowell
* Dr. Georges Grinstein is Professor of Computer Science and
Director of Institute for Visualization and Perception Research,
University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He is also Coordinator of
Information Exploration Shootout Project. Prof. Grinstein received
a M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from New York University
and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from University of Rochester. His
research interests include the design, modeling, visualization, and
analysis of complex information systems with applications to
databases and information visualization, imagery and non-imagery
data, WWW and information retrieval, and high performance computing
and graphics.
o Dr. Nabil R. Adam, Professor of Computers Information Systems and
Director of the Center for Information Management, Integration and
Connectivity (CIMIC), Rutgers University
* Nabil R. Adam received his M.S., M. Phil, and Ph.D. degrees
from Columbia University. He is a Professor of Computers and
Information Systems and the Director of the Center for
Information Management, Integration, and Connectivity (CIMIC) at
Rutgers University and Member of the Department of Computer and
Information Science, NJIT.
Dr. Adam contributed to such journals as IEEE Transactions
on Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and
Data Engineering, ACM Computing Surveys, Communications
of the ACM, Information Systems, Journal of Management Information
Systems, Int. Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information
Systems
He is the co-founder and current chair of the IEEE Task force on
Digital Libraries. He served as the General Chair of the 1997
IEEE International Conference on the Advances in Digital
Libraries (IEEE ADL'97), the Program Chair of the 1996
Forum on Research and Technology Advances in Digital
Libraries, the Program Co-chair of the 1995 Forum on Research
and Technology Advances in Digital Libraries, and the Program
Chair of the 1994 International Conference on Information and
Knowledge Management. He also served on the program committee
of several international conferences.
Dr. Adam has been elected as an IEEE Distinguished Visiting
Speaker for the period 1997 through 2000. He was invited to
lecture on Digital Libraries and other related topics at several
institutions including Department of Computer Science, SUNY at
Buffalo, April 1997; The International Conference on the Digital
Libraries and Information Services for the 21st Century (KOLISS
DL'96), Seoul, Korea, September 1996; Matsushita Information
Technology Laboratory, Panasonic Technologies, Inc., Princeton,
NJ., September 1996; The Development and Practice of Law in the
Age of the Internet, Washington College of Law Centennial Week
Symposium, April 1996; The Bilkent University-sponsored Symposium
on Environment, Space, and Communications, Bilkent, Ankara,
Turkey, February 1996; The Computer Science and Industrial
Engineering departments, Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva,
Israel, February 1996; 2nd International Workshop on Next
Generation Info. Technologies and Systems, The Technion and
Neaman Institute, Israel, June 1995; American Association for
Clinical Chemistry, April 1995.
His research work has been supported by the Defense Logistics
Agency (DLA), The NASA Center for Excellence in Space Data and
Information Sciences (CESDIS), and Bellcore. He also serves as
a consultant to several organizations, including Bellcore, and
Center for Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences,
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
o Dr. Maximilian Ott, Senior Research Staff Member, NEC CCRL-Princeton
* Dr. Maximilian Ott is a Senior Research Staff Member in the
System Architecture Department of NEC's C&C Research Laboratories
in Princeton, New Jersey. He is interested in the impact of
ubiquitous computing and high-speed networks on our lives.
He mainly works however, on the more concrete issues of adaptive
and scalable distributed multimedia systems.
Dr. Ott has an M.S. degree in Communication Engineering from the
University of Technology in Vienna, Austria, and a Ph.D. degree in
Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan. Before
joining NEC, he was a Visiting Scientist with NHK, Japan where he
developed the PicPen system. He is a member of ACM, and serves on
various program committees for the ACM and IEEE.
* Additional panelists are being invited
16:30~16:45 Closing Summary Statement
16:45~17:30 Social hour
********************
* Registration: *
********************
Attendance is free with advance registration through email
by October 27, 1997 (Monday). Limited seating is available
through on-site registration. To register, please fill out the
attached Forum Registration Form and email to:
For questions or additional information, please contact
Sue S. Frasula, Forum Secretariat
Computers & Communications Research Laboratories
NEC USA, Inc.
110 Rio Robles, M/S SJ100
San Jose, CA 95134
USA
e-mail: suef@ccrl.sj.nec.com
phone: (408) 943-3007 fax: (408) 943-3099
Forum Registration Form
========================================================================
Dr./Mr./Mrs/Ms. ..........................................................
Last Name:.......................... First Name:..........................
Affiliation:..............................................................
Title:....................................................................
Student (Yes/No): ........................................................
Mailing Address: .........................................................
..........................................................................
..........................................................................
Tel:............................... Fax:..................................
E-mail:...................................................................
========================================================================
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