84th MPEG meeting in Archamps, France organized by MMSPL

We hosted and organized the 84th MPEG meeting from April 26th to May 2nd 2008, in Archamps, France, at about 15 minutes of distance form downtown Geneva. This MPEG meeting was hosted by Switzerland just 9 months after a previous one in Summer 2007, which was also reported in this blog. See the following url for the report of that meeting, which took place at EPFL in Lausanne:
http://blogs.epfl.ch/touradj.ebrahimi/2007-10-31
More than 200 people attended the MPEG meeting in Archamps. Some information about this meeting can be consulted at the following url:
http://www.mpegswissmeeting.ch/qsPortal/Home.asp
A lot more about MPEG and its workplan can be found at the following url:
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/
I have put some pictures of the meeting in Archamps at the following location:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Touradj.Ebrahimi/MPEGmeetingArchamps2008
MPEG will return again to Switzerland for another meeting in about 9 months, also hosted and organized by us.

Fifth MMSPL Lunch Meeting

On May 5th, 2008, we had our research group's fifth lunch meeting. This time the lunch was organized by Shuiming Ye, who is a post-doc with us.
You can see some pictures of the lunch at the following url:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Touradj.Ebrahimi/FifthMMSPLLunchMeeting

Q2S 2008 Advisory Board Meeting

The Advisory Board of Q2S met with the members of the Center on 19 and 20 May 2008 at a beautiful place called Brekstad about one hour from Trondheim by speed boat. This was an opportunity to discuss the latest progress of Q2S with the scientific advisory board members, but also it was an occasion to enjoy the beauties of Norway.

Those interested in knowing more about Q2S can consult its annual reports of Q2S available from the following site:
http://www.q2s.ntnu.no/annrep.php

One of the highlights of this event was a sailing boat ride and fishing expedition after the first day meeting. This was a unique and exciting experience.
Some photos can be consulted at the following url:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Touradj.Ebrahimi/Q2S2008AdvisoryBoardMeeting

If you thought that Norway is about oil and salmon only, I recommend a visit to this beautiful country. You will be pleasantly surprized.
And by the way, did you know there are great opportunities for talented researchers and Ph.D. students at Q2S? If you want to know more, drop me an email.

MMSPL forth lunch meeting in 2008

We had our forth lunch meeting on 14th April 2008. This lunch was organized by Gelareh Mohammadi who actually cooked for us some good Iranian food. This lunch was also an opportunity to welcome our new colleague Ivan Ivanov who has joined our group as a research assistant and Ph.D. student.
Some pictures can be consulted at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Touradj.Ebrahimi/MMSPLForthLunchMeetingIn2008

MMSPL third lunch meeting in 2008

The third lunch meeting of Multimedia Signal Processing Group took place on Wednesday 12 March 2008. The lunch was organized by our colleague Lionel Rhyn. This was an occasion to welcome Yolanda Cobos Campos from VicomTECH, Spain, who was staying with us in the framework of a short time scientific mission financed by COST 292 Action. We also took this opportunity to say goodbye and wish good luck to now Dr. Ulrich Hoffmann who was leaving our research group at the end of March, upon successful completion of his Ph.D. thesis.
Some pictures of the lunch can be consulted at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Touradj.Ebrahimi/MMSPLThirdLunchMeeting

JPEG meeting in San Francisco

The 44th JPEG meeting took place in San Francisco from March 31st to April 4th. This was a very fruitful meeting with good progress in many ongoing activities. JPEG XR which is a new compression scheme in between JPEG and JPEG 2000 in terms of complexity but also performance, moved one step forward by becoming Committee Draft. JPSearch approved several Working Drafts for its various parts, and a new independent standard activity was initiated called JPEG DI which will standardize tools that go across all JPEG codecs (file format, security tools, interactivity tools, evaluation tools, etc.). Advanced Image Coding activities were also moved forward with agreement on a workplan and next steps towards a call for technologies for the next generation image coding standard.
One of the highlights of this meeting was the 3D digital cinema projection of Beowulf which was attended by the experts of JPEG at the kind invitation of Dolby Laboratories on their premises and projection room in San Francisco.

Some pictures I took during the meeting can be seen from:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Touradj.Ebrahimi/JPEGMeetingInSanFrancisco

Invited Presentation at Defense and Security Symposium 2008

Defense and Security Symposium (DSS) is an annual event gathering academics, engineers, and professionals in various areas of security and defense in Orlando, Florida. The symposium often takes place either during the Easter week, or next to it. This year DSS was from 16-20 March 2008. You can have a look at the program and various conferences organized during DSS by referring to the following url:

http://spie.org/x23834.xml

I have been attending DSS since three years now and usually teach a short course there on Information Processing for Video Surveillance together with my colleague Dr. Frédéric Dufaux. In 2008, we took a short break from giving this course at DSS (it was given instead during the Electronic Imaging in San Jose on January 2008, and will be given again on July 2008 during SPIE annual meeting in San Diego). Instead, I went there to make an invited presentation on JPSEC and JPWL standards during the conference on Mobile Multimedia/Image Processing, Security, and Applications 2008, which is one of the many conferences during DSS.

I often meet a colleague from MPEG, Pankaj Topiwala, during DSS. The picture below was taken this year with him. You can also consult the content of my invited presentation by going to the mirror of this blog at EPFL.