URL: https://mmsys2022.ie/
Date: June 14 - 17, 2022
Place: Athlone, Ireland
General Chairs: Niall Murray (Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland), Mylene Farias (University of Brasilia, Brazil), Gwendal Simon (Synamedia, France)
Authors: Andrea M. Storås, Reza Farahani, Xiaokun Xu, Sindhu Chellappa, Tzu-Yi Fan, Kerim Hodžić, Juan Antonio De Rus Arance, Miguel Fernández Dasí, Melan Vijayaratnam, Chun Wei Ooi, Jingwen Zhu,
Editor: Mylène Farias (University of Brasilia, Brazil)
The 13th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (and associated workshops: MMVE 2022, NOSSDAV 2022, GameSys 2022) happened from 14th – 17th June 2022 in Athlone, Ireland. The MMSys conference is an essential forum for researchers in multimedia systems to present and share their latest research findings in multimedia systems. After two years of online and hybrid editions, MMSys was held onsite in the beautiful Athlone. Besides the many high-quality technical talks spread across different multimedia areas and the wonderful keynote talks, there were a few events targeted especially at students, such as mentoring sessions and the doctoral symposium. The social events were significant this year since they were the first opportunity in two years for multimedia researchers to meet colleagues, collaborators, and friends and discuss the latest hot topics while sharing a pint of Guinness or a glass of wine.
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, 11 were able to attend the conference. We asked them to share their unique experience attending MMSys’22. In this article, we share their reports of the event.
Andrea M. Storås, PhD student, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
I am grateful for receiving the SIGMM Student Travel Grant and getting the opportunity to participate at the MMSys’ 2022 Conference in Athlone, Ireland. During the conference, I presented my research as a part of the Doctoral Symposium and got valuable advice and mentoring from an experienced professor in the field of multimedia systems. The Doctoral Symposium was a great place for me to get experience with pitching my research and presenting posters at a scientific conference.
In addition to inspiring talks and demos, the conference was filled with social events. One of the highlights was the boat trip to the Glasson Lake House with barbeque afterwards. I found the conference useful for my future career as I got to meet brilliant researchers, connect with other PhD students and discuss topics related to my PhD. I really hope that I will get the opportunity to participate in future editions of MMSys.
Reza Farahani, PhD student, ITEC Dept., Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt, Austria
After two years of virtual attendance in ACM MMSys, I had the opportunity to be in Athlone, Ireland, and present our work in front of the community. Like previous years, I expected a well-organized conference, and I witnessed everything from keynotes to papers sessions was perfect. Moreover, the social events were one of the best experiences I achieved, where I could discuss with community members and learn many things in a friendly atmosphere. Overall, I must express that the MMSys 2022 was excellent in all aspects, and I appreciate the SIGMM committee once again for the nice travel grant which made this experience possible.
Xiaokun Xu, PhD student, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
The MMsys2022 was my first in-person conference, and it was very well organized and far more than my expectation for an in-person conference since in the past 2 years I participated in some virtual conferences and they were not very good experiences. I thought the in-person conference would be similar. The fact is that I was totally wrong. MMsys2022 was a wonderful experience, the first time I built a real connection with the community and peer researchers.
Many things impressed me a lot. For the papers and presentations, I found the poster #75 “Realistic Video Sequences for Subjective QoE Analysis” was really interesting to me. The presentation from the author was very helpful and I talked a lot with the author. Now he is one of my new friends I made from the conference and we still keep in communication through email.
Besides the papers, social events were another part that impressed me. All the social events were highly organized and made communication easier for us. I got the opportunity to talk with the authors and ask some questions that I didn’t ask during the presentation, and made some new friends who are doing similar research as me. I also got the chance to talk with some professors who are the top researchers in specific fields. Those are really precious experiences for a PhD student.
Overall, MMSys 2022 was an amazing conference and now it’s an encouragement for me to attend more academic communication in future. I’m really grateful to the SIGMM committee for the travel grant, which made this wonderful experience possible.
Sindhu Chellappa, PhD student, University of New Hampshire, US
I am really happy to be part of MMSys at Athlone, Ireland. This is the first in-person conference I have attended after the pandemic. The conference was organized seamlessly, and the keynotes were very interesting. The keynote “Network is the Renderer” by Dr Morgan from Roblox stole the entire show. Along with that, the keynotes by Dr Ali and Dr Mohamed Hefeeda on Low latency streaming and DeepGame respectively were very interesting. The social events were very relaxing and well organized. I had to travel from the US to India and to Ireland. It was a breathtaking trip, but with the student travel grant, it was a boon to attend the conference in-person.
Tzu-Yi Fan, master student, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
I am grateful to receive the student grant for MMSys 2022, which was my first in-person conference. I learned a lot at the conference and had a wonderful experience in Athlone, Ireland.
Initially, I felt nervous when I arrived in a distant and unfamiliar place, but the kind and welcomed organization calmed my mind. The schedule of the conference was fruitful. I enjoyed the presentations and keynotes a lot. I presented my paper about high-rise firefighting in the special session. Although I did not speak smoothly at the beginning, I still enjoyed interacting with the audience. Keynote given by Professor Mohamed impressed me a lot. He spoke about the challenges of cloud gaming and introduced a video encoding pipeline to reduce the bandwidth. I also loved the coffee break between sessions. During that time, people worldwide could discuss each other’s research, which I could not do in virtual participation. It was an excellent opportunity to practice demonstrating our research to people from different backgrounds.
Moreover, the social events at night were also exciting. I tasted several kinds of beer at the welcome party. Ireland is famous for beer. I was glad to try the local flavour, which I never thought beer could be.
Thank the MMSys 2022 organization for holding such a splendid conference and expanding my horizons. I look forward to carrying on my new research and joining more conferences in the future.
Kerim Hodžić, PhD student, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
My name is Kerim Hodžić, and I am a PhD student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science Department at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was my pleasure to attend the ACM/MMSYS 2022 conference held in Athlone, Ireland where I presented my paper „Realistic Video Sequences for Subjective QoE Analysis” which is part of my PhD research. In addition to that, I had an opportunity to learn much from attending all the conference sessions with very interesting paper presentations and also from the special guests who provided us with interesting information about the industry. In social events, I met many people from industry and academia and I hope it will lead to some useful cooperation in the future. This is the best conference I have attended so far in my career and I want to congratulate everyone who organised it. I also want to thank the SIGMM committee for their travel grant, which made this experience possible. Till the next MMSYS! All the best.
Juan Antonio De Rus Arance, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
MMSys’2022 was an amazing experience and a great opportunity to discover other research works in my field. It gave me the chance to meet colleagues working in the same area and discuss ideas with them, opening the doors to possible collaborations. Moreover, participating in the Doctoral Symposium was very didactic.
It wouldn’t have been possible for me to attend the conference if it wasn’t for the SIGMM Student travel award and I’m very grateful.
Miguel Fernández Dasí, PhD student, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
I am a PhD student at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and MMSys 2022 was my first in-person conference. I attended the Doctoral Symposium to present my paper, “Design, development and evaluation of adaptive and interactive solutions for high-quality viewport-aware VR360 video processing and delivery”.
It was a great experience meeting fellow PhD students and sharing ideas about different topics, especially with those working in the same area. Furthermore, everyone at the conference was always willing to talk, which I have significantly appreciated as a PhD student and that always led to fascinating conversations.
All the keynotes were engaging. I was particularly interested in Prof. Mohamed Hefeeda’s “DeepGame: Efficient Video Encoding for Cloud Gaming” keynote, a topic related to my PhD thesis. I also found Prof. Nadia Magnenat Thalmann’s keynote on “Digital and Robotic Humanoid Twins: for Which Purposes” interesting, a topic I didn’t know about but found great interest in. I am thankful to SIGMM for receiving the Student Travel Grant, which made my attendance at this conference possible.
Melan Vijayaratnam, PhD student, CentraleSupelec, France
I am delighted to have been given a grant for the MMSys conference in Athlone, Ireland. This was my first in-person conference that my supervisor Dr Giuseppe Valenzise really wanted me to attend to meet with the Multimedia community. I went there by myself and it was scary at first to go to the conference without knowing anyone at first. However, being on the doctoral symposium track, my mentor Dr Pablo Cesar helped me with his advice and introduced me to many people and I got to meet other fellow PhD students. It was definitely an incredible experience and I am grateful to have been introduced to this welcoming community.
Chun Wei Ooi, PhD student, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
It was my first time attending the MMsys conference this year. I would like to thank the committee for awarding the travel grants to students such as myself. I presented my research topic at MMVE and received some good suggestions from senior researchers. It was a very fruitful conference where I met different researchers from different backgrounds and levels. I also benefited tremendously from attending the conference because my latest work is partly inspired by the research talk I attended. One of the highlights of attending MMsys in person is its many social events. Not only did they show the best side of the venue, but more importantly I was able to make friends with fellow researchers. Overall MMsys community is a very talented and friendly bunch, I am glad to be a part of it.
Jingwen Zhu, PhD student, Nantes university, France
I was very disappointed that I didn’t receive my visa until the day before the MMSys. However, I got a call from the embassy on the first day of the conference, telling me that my visa application was approved. I shared the news with my supervisor Patrick Le Callet, who insisted that I should buy the next plane to come to the conference and present my research proposal in person.
MMSys is the first conference for me since the beginning of my PhD. As a first-year PhD student, it was a very good opportunity for me to know this excellent community and exchange my research with more experienced researchers. I really appreciate the breakfast with my mentor Dr Ketan Mayer-Patel. He gave me very nice suggestions for my PhD during breakfast. After the conference, he still sent me a good tutorial about how to make a good academic poster. I would like to thank the conference organizers and the travel grand for giving me the opportunity to meet everyone in person. Thanks to everyone who exchanged ideas with me during the conference and especially my DS mentor Ketan. I hope that I can continue to attend MMSys next year!