Students Report from ACM Multimedia 2022

ACM Multimedia 2022 was held in a hybrid format in Lisbon, Portugal from October 10-14, 2022.

This was the first local participation in three years for many participants, as the strict travel restrictions associated with Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021 made it difficult to participate locally by travelling out of the host and neighbouring countries.

In Portugal, the Covid-19 restrictions were almost lifted, and the city was bustling with tourists. Participants were careful to avoid infectious diseases and enjoyed Lisbon’s local wine “Vinho Verde” and cod dishes with their colleagues and engaged in lively discussions about multimedia research.

For many students, this was their first time presenting at an international conference, and it was a wonderful experience.

To encourage student authors to participate on-site, SIGMM has sponsored a group of students with Student Travel Grant Awards. Students who wanted to apply for this travel grant needed to submit an online form before the submission deadline. The selected students received either 1,000 or 2,000 USD to cover their airline tickets as well as accommodation costs for this event. Of the recipients, 25 were able to attend the conference. We asked them to share their unique experience attending ACM Multimedia 2022. In this article, we share their reports of the event.

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Xiangming Gu, PhD student, National University of Singapore, Singapore

It is a great honour to receive a SIGMM Student Grant. ACM Multimedia 2022 is my first time attending an academic conference physically. During the conference, I presented my oral paper “MM-ALT: Multimodal Automatic Lyric Transcription”, which was also selected as “Top Rated Papers”. Besides the presentation, I also met a lot of people who shared similar research interests. It was very inspiring to learn from others’ papers and discuss them with the authors directly. Moreover, I was also a volunteer for ACM Multimedia 2022 and attended the session of the 5^th International ACM Workshop on Multimedia Content Analysis in Sports. During the session, I learnt how to organize a workshop, which was a great exercise for me. Now, after I come back to Singapore, I still miss the conference. I wish I can get my paper accepted next year and attend the conference again.

Avinash Madasu, Computer Science Master’s student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA.

It is my absolute honour to receive the student travel grant for attending the ACM Multimedia 2022 conference. This is the first time I have attended a top AI conference in-person. I enjoyed it a lot during the conference and I was sad that the conference ended quickly. Within the conference days, I was able to attend a lot of oral sessions, keynote talks and poster sessions. I was able to interact with fellow researchers from both academia and industry. I learnt a lot about exciting research going on in my area of interest as well as other areas. It provided a new refreshing experience and I hope to bring this to my research. I presented a poster and felt happy when fellow researchers appreciated my work. Apart from technical details, I was able to forge a lot of new friendships which I truly cherish for my whole life.

Moreno La Quatra, PhD student, Politecnico di Torino

The ACM Multimedia 2022 conference was an amazing experience. After a few years of remote conferences, it was a pleasure to be able to attend the conference in person. I got the opportunity to meet many researchers of different seniorities and backgrounds, and I learned a lot from them. The poster sessions were one of the highlights of the conference. They were a very valuable opportunity to present interesting ideas and explore the details of other researchers’ work. I found the keynotes, presentations, and workshops to be very inspiring and engaging as well. Throughout them, I learned about specific topics and interacted with friendly, passionate researchers from around the world. I would like to thank the ACM Multimedia 2022 organization for the opportunity to attend the conference in Lisbon, all the other volunteers for their friendly and helpful attitude, and the SIGMM Student Travel Grant committee for the financial support.

Sheng-Ming Tang, Master student, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

My name is Sheng-Ming Tang from National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. It is a great honour for me to receive the student travel grant. First, I want to thank the committee for organizing this fantastic event. As ACM MM 2022 is my first in-person experience presenting at a conference, I felt a little bit nervous in the first place. However, I started to get comfortable in the conference through the interaction of those astonishing researchers and the volunteers. It was great to not only present in front of the public but also participate in the events. I met a lot of people who solved problems with different and creative approaches, learned brand-new mindsets from the keynote sessions, and gained abundant feedback from the audience, which would boost my research. Thank the committee again for giving me this greatest opportunity to present and share my work in person. I enjoyed a lot during the event.

Tai-Chen Tsai, Graduate student, National Tsing Hua University Taiwan

First, I would like to thank ACM for providing a student travel grant that allowed me to attend the conference. This is my first time presenting my work at a conference. The conference I attended was the interactive art session. I was worried that the setup would be complicated abroad. However, as soon as I arrived at the site, volunteers assisted me with the installation. The conference provided complete hardware resources, allowing me to have a smooth and excellent exhibition experience. Also, I took the opportunity to see many interesting researchers from different countries. The work “Emotional Machines” in the interactive art exhibition surprised me. His system collects and combines what participants are saying and their current emotions. The data is transformed into 360-degree image content in the VR environment through the model so that everyone’s information forms a small universe in the VR environment. The idea is creative.
Additionally, I can chat and discuss projects with published researchers while volunteering at workshops. They shared their lifestyle and work experiences as researchers in European countries, and we discussed what interesting study is and what is not. This is the best reward for me.

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Bhalaji Nagarajan, PhD Student, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

ACM-Multimedia was the first big conference I was able to participate in person after two years of complete virtual participation. I presented my work both as oral and poster presentations at the Workshop on Multimedia-Assisted Dietary Management (MADiMa). It gave me an excellent opportunity to present my work and to get valuable input from reputed pioneers regarding the future scope. It gave me a new dimension and helped in expanding my technical skill set. This was also my first volunteering experience on such a massive scale. It gave me a great learning experience to see and learn how to manage conferences of such a large scale.
I am very happy that I attended the conference in person. I was able to meet new people, and reputed pioneers in the field, learn new things and of course, made some new friends. A big thank you for the SIGMM Travel Grant that allowed me to attend the conference in-person in Lisbon.

Kiruthika Kannan, MS by Research, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India. 

My paper on “DrawMon: A Distributed System for Detection of Atypical Sketch Content in Concurrent Pictionary Games” was accepted at the 30th ACM International Conference on Multimedia. It was my first international conference, and I felt honoured to be able to present my research in front of experienced researchers. The conference also exhibited diverse research projects addressing fascinating scientific and technological problems. The poster sessions and talks at the conference improved my knowledge of the research trends in multimedia. In addition to this, I was able to interact with fellow researchers from diverse cultures. It was interesting to hear about their experiences and learn about their work at their institution. As a volunteer at the conference, I witnessed the hard work of the behind the scene organizers and volunteering team to smoothly run the events. I am grateful to the SIGMM Student Travel Grant for supporting my attendance at the ACMMM 22 conference.

Garima Sharma, PhD Student, Department of Human-Centred Computing, Monash University

It was a pleasure to receive a SIGMM travel grant and to attend the ACM Multimedia 2022 conference in person. ACM Multimedia is one of the top conferences in my research area and it was my first in-person conference during my PhD. I had a great experience interacting with numerous researchers and fellow PhD students. Along with all the interesting keynotes, I attended as many oral sessions as possible. Some of these sessions were aligned with my research work and some were outside of my work. This gave me a new research perspective at different levels. Also, working with organisers in a few sessions gave me a whole new experience in managing these events. Overall, I got many insightful comments, suggestions and feedback which motivated me with some interesting directions in my research work. I would like to thank the organisers for making this year’s ACM Multimedia a wonderful experience for every attendee.

Alon Harell, PhD student at the Multimedia Lab at Simon Fraser University

I had the pleasure to receive the SIGMM Student Travel Grant and to attend and volunteer at ACM Multimedia 22 in Lisbon, Portugal. The work I submitted to the conference was done outside of my regular PhD research, and thus without this grant, I would have not been able to participate. The workshop at which I presented, ACM MM Sport 22, was incredibly eye-opening with many fantastic papers, great presentations, and above all great people with which I was able to exchange ideas, form bonds, and perhaps even create future collaborations. The main conference, which coincides more closely with my main research on image and video coding for machines, was just as good. With fascinating talks, some in person, and some virtual, I was exposed to many new ideas (or perhaps just new to me) and learned a great deal. I was also able to benefit from the generosity and experience of Prof.  Chong Wah Ngo from Singapore Management University, during my PhD. Mentor lunch, who shared with me his thoughts on pursuing a career in academia. Overall, ACM Multimedia 22 was an especially unique experience because it was the first in-person conference I was able to attend since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and being back face-to-face with fellow researchers was a great pleasure.

Lorenzo Vaiani, Ph.D. student (1st year), Politecnico di Torino, Italy

ACM MM 2022 was my first in-person conference. Being able to present my works and discuss them with other participants in person was an incredible experience. I enjoyed every activity, from presentations and posters to workshops and demos. I received excellent feedback and new inspiration to continue my research. The best part was definitely strengthening the bonds with friends I already knew and making more with the amazing people I met there. I learned a lot from all of them. Volunteer activities helped a lot in making these kinds of connections. Thanks to the organizers for this fantastic opportunity and the SIGMM Student Travel Grant committee for the financial support. This edition of ACM MM was just the first for me, but I hope for many more in the future.

Xiaoyu Lin, third-year PhD student at Inria Grenoble, France

It is a great honour to attend ACM MM 2022 in Lisbon. It was a great experience. I have met lots of nice professors and researchers. Discussing with them gave me lots of inspiration on both research directions and career development. I presented my work during the doctoral symposium. I’ve got plenty of useful feedback which can help me to improve our work. During the “Ask Me Anything” lunch, I have the chance to discuss with several senior researchers. They provide me with some kind and very useful advice on how to do research. Besides, I have also served as a volunteer for a workshop. It also helped me to meet other volunteers and made some new friends. Thanks to all the chairs and organizers who have worked hard to make ACM MM 2022 such a wonderful conference.  It’s really an impressive experience!

Zhixin Ma, PhD student, Singapore Management University, Singapore

I would like to thank the ACM Multimedia Committee provided me with the student travel grant so that I can attend the conference in person. ACM Multimedia is the worldwide top conference in the Multimedia field. It provides me with an opportunity to present my work and communicate with the researchers working on this topic of multimedia search.
Besides, the excellent keynotes and passionate panel talk also picture a good vision of future research in the multimedia field. Overall, I must express that ACM MM22 is amazing and well-organized. I again appreciate the ACM MM committee for the student travel grant, which made my attendance possible.