Monday Morning Keynote, 8:40 - 9:40am, December 10, 2007

Prof. Benjamin W. Wah

Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Abstract: The use of VoIP for carrying real-time voice data over any IP network, public or private, has significant impacts on the multi-billion dollar telecommunication industry. Its promise on less expensive phone calls with comparable quality, as well as the proliferation of the broadband Internet, has increased its worldwide adoption. In this talk, we present the design issues and some solutions for delivering high and consistent conversational voice communication quality (CVCQ) perceived by users in real-time VoIP systems. We identify the attributes that affect the human perception of CVCQ, which include listening-only speech quality (LOSQ), conversational interactivity (CI), and conversational efficiency (CE). We investigate their trade-offs with respect to system-controllable mouth-to-ear delays and the amount of redundant piggybacking. We illustrate the solutions in two-party and multi-party conferencing systems and compare their performance to that in Skype, Google-Talk, Windows Live, and Yahoo Messenger.

About the speaker: Benjamin W. Wah is currently the Franklin W. Woeltge Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, in 1979. Previously, he had served on the faculty of Purdue University. In 1989, he was awarded a University Scholar of the University of Illinois; in 1998, he received the IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award; in 2000, the IEEE Millennium Medal; in 2003, the Raymond T. Yeh Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Design and Process Science; in 2006, the IEEE Computer Society W. Wallace-McDowell Award and the Pan Wen-Yuan Outstanding Research Award, and in 2007, the IEEE Computer Society Richard E. Merwin Award and the IEEE-CS Technical Committee on Distributed Processing Outstanding Achievement Award. Wah's current research interests are in the areas of nonlinear search and optimization, multimedia signal processing, and computer networks.
Wah cofounded the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering in 1988 and served as its Editor-in-Chief between 1993 and 1996, and is the Honorary Editor-in-Chief of Knowledge and Information Systems. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Information Sciences, International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools, Journal of VLSI Signal Processing, World Wide Web, and Neural Processing Letters. He had chaired a number of international conferences, including the 2000 IFIP World Congress and the 2006 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Data Mining and Intelligent Agent Technology. He has served the IEEE Computer Society in various capacities, including Vice President for Publications (1998 and 1999) and President (2001). He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and IEEE.

Monday Afternoon Keynote, 13:00 -14:00pm, December 10, 2007

Prof. Jay Kishigami

NTT Cyber Solutions Laboratory, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract: The IPTV, Internet Protocol TV, is one of the hottest topics as an emerging service. This new media service has a significant potential where a various kind of content can be enjoyed in a variety of way.
We are living in the content-centric world. This flood of data thanks to the evolution of the hardware since 60 year-old transistor technology becomes the potential problem these days. The user experience of this new media is thought as a key factor to success an IPTV service. Since a very early stage in ITU-T Focus Group on IPTV, QoE, Quality of Experience, is considered as a most important factor. This subjective concept should be measurable in a same manner as the QoS. The metadata function for the personalized service in IPTV will be described also Executive Director of Cyber Solution Laboratory, Vice President, Service Strategy, Corporate Management Strategy Division and Executive Chief Producer, Convergence, NTT holding company.

About the speaker: From 1994 to 1999 he worked with NTT America as a vice president and general manager at IP HQs in the area of creating and promoting the Internet business both in US and in Japan. He coordinated ISP and Backbone between US and Japan.
He is now leading the IPTV service and technology development. At the same time, he is also directing the RFID, human-interface, and web technologies.

Banquet Keynote on Monday, 6:30 - 8:30pm, December 10, 2007

Prof. Ming-Syan Chen

CEO & President, Institute for Information Industry
Director, Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering, National Taiwan University
Director, Communication Research Center, National Taiwan University

About the speaker: Ming-Syan Chen received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer, Information and Control Engineering from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in 1985 and 1988, respectively. Dr. Chen is currently the CEO & President of Institute for Information Industry (III) in Taiwan. He is also distinguished professor in Electrical Engineering Department, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. He was a research staff member at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA from 1988 to 1996.His research interests include database systems, data mining, mobile computing systems, and multimedia networking, and he has published more than 230 papers in his research areas. He has received numerous awards for his research, teaching, inventions and patent applications. Dr. Chen is a Fellow of ACM and a Fellow of IEEE.

Tuesday Morning Keynote, 8:00 - 9:00am, December 11, 2007

Prof. Klara Nahrstedt

Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract: Tele-immersive 3D multi-camera, multi-display room environments are emerging and with them new challenging research questions. One important question is how to organize the large amount of visual data, being captured, processed, transmitted and displayed, and their corresponding resources over current COTS computing and networking infrastructures so that “everybody” would be able to install and use tele-immersive environments for conferencing and other activities. In this talk, I will discuss the Internet and multimedia system challenges in these tele-immersive rooms and present a novel cross-layer control and adaptive streaming framework over general purpose delivery infrastructure, called TEEVE (Tele-immersive Environments for EVErybody). TEEVE aims for effective and adaptive view-casting, coordination, synchronization and soft QoS-enabled delivery of tele-immersive visual streams among remote room(s).
Our current TEEVE experiments with collaborative dance choreography between UIUC and UC Berkeley dancers show that we can sustain communication of up to 12 3D video streams with up to 8-10 frames per second for each stream, rendering the distributed dance participants in a synchronized fashion up to 8-10 4D video frames per second. I will also discuss the feedback we received from the dancers as well as the successes and challenges that still remain in this very interesting creative dance application.

About the speaker: Klara Nahrstedt is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Computer Science Department. Her research interests are directed towards multimedia middleware systems, quality of service(QoS), QoS routing, QoS-aware resource management in distributed multimedia systems, protocols for tele-immersive systems and multimedia security. She is the coauthor of the widely used multimedia books `Multimedia: Computing, Communications and Applications' published by Prentice Hall 1995, and ‘Multimedia Systems’ published by Springer Verlag 2004. She is the recipient of the Early NSF Career Award, the Junior Xerox Award, the IEEE Communication Society Leonard Abraham Award for Research Achievements, and the Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professorship Chair. She was the editor-in-chief of ACM/Springer Multimedia Systems Journal (2000-2006), general co-chair of ACM Multimedia 2006, and general chair of ACM NOSSDAV 2007. In July 2007, she was elected to serve as the chair of the ACM Special Interest Group (SIG) for Multimedia area.
Klara Nahrstedt received her BA in mathematics from Humboldt University, Berlin, in 1984, and M.Sc. degree in numerical analysis from the same university in 1985. She was a research scientist in the Institute for Informatik in Berlin until 1990. In 1995 she received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Computer and Information Science.

Tuesday Afternoon Keynote, 13:00 - 14:00pm, December 11, 2007

Prof. Chin-Chen Chang

Feng Chia University

Abstract: Vector quantization (VQ) is a simple and widely used compression technology in many applications. For image compression, VQ provides both a fixed compression ratio and maintains acceptable distortion. However, the performance of VQ still can be improved in terms of the image quality of compressed images and codebook size used for encoding and decoding. A new VQ-like image compression method which improves the performance of traditional VQ by using locally adaptive coding concept is introduced. The experimental results confirm that the image quality of the compressed image offered by the method is higher than 30 dB on average, and the number of codewords used in the codebook is less than that required by traditional VQ.

About the speaker: Chin-Chen Chang received his BS degree in applied mathematics in 1977 and the MS degree in computer and decision sciences in 1979, both from the National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D in computer engineering in 1982 from the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. During the academic years of 1980-1983, he was on the faculty of the Department of Computer Engineering at the National Chiao Tung University. From 1983-1989, he was on the faculty of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan. From August 1989 to July 1992, he was the head of, and a professor in, the Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering at the National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan. From August 1992 to July 1995, he was the dean of the college of Engineering at the same university. From August 1995 to October 1997, he was the provost at the National Chung Cheng University. From September 1996 to October 1997, Dr. Chang was the Acting President at the National Chung Cheng University. From July 1998 to June 2000, he was the director of Advisory Office of the Ministry of Education of the R.O.C. From 2002 to 2005, he was a Chair Professor of National Chung Cheng University. Since February 2005, he has been a Chair Professor of Feng Chia University. In addition, he has served as a consultant to several research institutes and government departments. His current research interests include database design, computer cryptography, image compression and data structures.

Tuesday Evening Keynote, 18:00 - 19:30pm, December 11, 2007

Prof. Jhing-fa Wang

Department of Electrical Engineering
National Cheng Kung University

Abstract: Human-centric digital life becomes more and more important and promising for recent years. This is because of people getting longer life and more new social services having been requested worldwide for recent years. What kinds of new intelligent multimedia techniques having to be developed and how to develop these new techniques to assist in achieving the goal of human-centric digital life becomes the challenges for both academic circles and industrial communities. In this talk, we will first review some previous efforts about intelligent multimedia processing for human-centric digital life (IMP-HCDL). This will introduce some developments from IBM, Microsoft and MIT etc. Then we will discuss some new thinking, new trends, new techniques, new applications and new industrial developments for IMP-HCDL. Finally the conclusion and future vision will be made.

About the speaker: Prof. Jhing-fa Wang is currently a Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). He got his bachelor and master degree from NCKU in Taiwan and Ph. D. from Stevens Institute of Technology USA in 1973, 1979 and 1983 respectively. He is now also the chairman of Tainan Section, IEEE. He was elected as IEEE Fellow in 1999 for his contribution on:”Hardware and Software Co-design on Speech Signal Processing”. He received Outstanding Research Awards and Outstanding Researcher Award from National Science Council in 1990, 1995, 1997, and 2006 respectively. He also received Outstanding Industrial Awards from ACER and Institute of Information Industry and the Outstanding Professor Award from Chinese Engineer Association, Taiwan in 1991 and 1996 respectively. Prof. Wang was also invited to give the Keynote Speeches in PACLIC 12 in Singapore, 1998, UWN 2005 in Taipei , WirlessCom 2005 in Hawaii and IIH-MSP 2006 in Pasadena, USA respectively. He also served as an associate editor on IEEE Transactions on Neural Network and IEEE Transactions on VLSI System and Editor in Chief on International Journal of Chinese Engineering from 1995 to 2000. He is now leading a research team sponsored by Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) for the research on advanced multimedia technology on human-centric digital life at the grant about one million USA dollars. Prof. Wang’s research areas is on multimedia signal processing including speech signal processing, image processing, and VLSI system design. Concerning about the publication, he has published about one hundred journal papers on IEEE, SIAM, IEICE, IEE and about two hundreds international conference papers.

Wednesday Morning Keynote, 8:00 - 9:00am, December 12, 2007

Prof. Max Muhlhauser

Technische Universitat Darmstadt, Telecooperation

Abstract: In the emerging Post-PC era, more and more computers ‘in the net’ can see, hear, or feel. Since these computers are networked, they can cooperate in the interpretation of their ‘sensation’. Cameras, camcorders, etc. will soon be wirelessly connected, doubling as mobile phones. In other words: mul-timedia goes ubiquitous. On the other hand, users leverage off the wealth of text-based information present in the global Internet. However, the potential that lies in the ‘cooperative sensation’ and in the use of global textual information is by far not leveraged: it is the past, present, and future grand challenge to enable computers to ‘make more sense’ of all this information. The talk will provide a unified model for both multimedia sense-making and textual-information sense-making, and propose fos-tering the confluence of these two threads. Based on this unified view, it will suggest steps towards improved sense-making in the world of ubiquitous computers.

About the speaker: Max Muhlhauser is a Full Professor of Computer Science at Technische Universitat Darmstadt, Germany. He received his Doctorate from the University of Karlsruhe and founded a research center for Digital Equipment (DEC). Since 1989, he worked as either professor or visiting professor at universities in Germany, Austria, France, Canada, and the US. Max published around 230 articles, co-authored and edited books about ubiquitous computing, e-learning, and distributed/multimedia software engineering. He heads the Telecooperation Division and the Departmental Computing Center within the Informatics Dept., the campus wide centre of research excellence in eLearning, and further initiatives in Darmstadt – more than 35 staff altogether. His core research interest is development support for next generation Internet applications, mainly in the following areas: ubiquitous, ambient, and mobile computing and commerce; eLearning; multimodal interaction, distributed multimedia and continuous media, hypermedia and SemanticWeb, cooperation, and pervasive security. The enabling technologies applied comprise distributed object-oriented programming, event-based and peer2peer infrastructures, hypertext, and audio/video processing.

Wednesday Afternoon Keynote, 13:00 - 14:00pm, December 12, 2007

Prof. Boris S. Verkhovsky

Computer Science Department, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Abstract: Performance evaluation and optimal control of multimedia integrated communication networks with shared facilities are considered in this keynote address. Analysis and design of such networks is analytically more complicated than those with dedicated channels. Movable-Boundary Protocol (MBP) on a link with s channels is considered. It is assumed that m channels, m<s, are reserved for delay sensitive traffic (DST; voice for short) and the remaining s-m channels are used for delay-permitting traffic (DPT; data for short). In addition, the DPT may use voice channels if they are not occupied by DST. Yet, the DST may not use channels reserved for DPT. A delay of data traffic and a probability that out of m channels reserved for voice only k channels are occupied ( ) are main components of DPT/DST network for its performance evaluation and for optimal traffic control. Voice traffic is subject to blocking if insufficient resources are allocated on a link. An average data delay function D(s, x) in the MBP on voice-data link with s channels, where x channels are reserved for DST, is employed in the optimal control algorithm. The TCP protocol operates at the source S and destination D. IP is used in-between. TCP divides data traffic into packets and then splits the flow of packets into several streams; IP uses routers to move all packets toward the destination node and controls the voice-data multimedia network. The TCP/IP protocol cyclically operates in "observe-predict-decide-implement" mode. The algorithm dynamically selects an optimal end-to-end path and allocates bandwidth on links of that path for voice and data traffic using MBP. Major sources of complexity: in dealing with multimedia communication networks one is confronted with non-determinism of input parameters and performance of network elements; non-linearity of formulas for average delays, blocking probabilities and hardware/software related cost functions; multi-dimensionality: to analyze/control/design a network it is necessary to consider a multitude of control variables and constraints on performance, reliability, security etc; real-time-control requirements since flows on the network are changing very fast; non-homogeneity of traffic components (voice/data); combinatorial complexity that stems from a multitude of choices of end-to-end paths. In order to deal with all these complexities, necessary assumptions are considered: they simplify the analysis and control, yet preserve the essence of the problem. A dynamic programming and Constraint Shortest-Path algorithms select an optimal source-destination path and optimal control variables minimizing the total end-to-end average delay and satisfying the requirements on the QoS for voice communication, or vice verse. Distributed/parallel implementation and storage: to minimize computational burden, certain arrays of information are pre-computed and stored (and periodically updated) at various routers, and numerous comparisons and other computations are performed in parallel mode.

About the speaker: Dr. Boris S. Verkhovsky is a Professor of Computer Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. From his prior affiliations at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Princeton University, IBM TJW Research Center, Bell Laboratories and now at the NJIT, he acquired vast research experience. Among his discoveries are algorithms for multi-index problems of linear programming, optimal search algorithms for extrema of multi-modal functions, constrained shortest-path algorithm, optimal control of large-scale systems under uncertainty, delinearization algorithms for various numerical problems, average complexity of divide-and-conquer algorithms etc. For the last thirty years his research interests are in optimal design and control of telecommunication networks and for the last fifteen years the research activity of Dr. Verkhovsky is in design of innovative cryptosystems. He is a recipient of numerous awards including the USSR Ministry of Radio-Electronics Award; the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Award; Alvin Johnson Award; Millennium Award and Medal of Excellence. Verkhovsky was Wallace Eckert Scientist at the IBM Research, Associate Professor at Princeton University, Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs and held Charles Dana Endowed Chair Professorship. In 2003 he received Blase Pascal Medal in Computer Science and was elected as a Fellow of European Academy of Science (EAS). In 2002-2004 Professor Verkhovsky served as a Governor of the EAS and in 2004-2006 as a VP of that Academy; in 2005 he has been the Chairman of the EAS Committee nominating candidates for Nobel Prize. Dr. Boris S. Verkhovsky is listed in Marquis Who'sWho in America.