Author Archives: griff

in Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications

Award Description

This award will be presented at most once per year to a researcher whose PhD thesis has the potential of very high impact in multimedia computing, communication and applications, or gives direct evidence of such impact. A selection committee will evaluate contributions towards advances in multimedia including multimedia processing, multimedia systems, multimedia network protocols and services, multimedia applications and interfaces. The award will recognize members of the SIGMM community and their research contributions in their PhD theses as well as the potential of impact of their PhD theses in multimedia area. The selection committee will focus on candidates’ contributions as judged by innovative ideas and potential impact resulting from their PhD work.

The award includes a US$500 honorarium, an award certificate of recognition, and an invitation for the recipient to receive the award at a current year’s SIGMM-sponsored conference, the ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM Multimedia). A public citation for the award will be placed on the SIGMM website, in the SIGMM Records e-newsletter as well as in the ACM e-newsletter.

Funding

The award honorarium, the award plaque of recognition and travel expenses to the ACM International Conference on Multimedia will be fully sponsored by the SIGMM budget.

Nomination Applications

Nominations will be solicited by the 1^st May 2013 with an award decision to be made by August 30. This timing will allow a recipient to prepare for an award presentation at ACM Multimedia in that Fall (October/November).

The initial nomination for a PhD thesis must relate to a dissertation deposited at the nominee’s Academic Institution between January and December of the year previous to the nomination. As discussed below, some dissertations may be held for up to three years by the selection committee for reconsideration. If the original thesis is not in English, a full English translation must be provided with the submission. Nominations for the award must include:

1. PhD thesis (upload at:  https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/SIGMM2012/ )
2. A statement summarizing the candidate’s PhD thesis contributions and potential impact, and justification of the nomination (two pages maximum);
3. Curriculum Vitae of the nominee
4. Three endorsement letters supporting the nomination including the significant PhD thesis contributions of the candidate. Each endorsement should be no longer than 500 words with clear specification of nominee PhD thesis contributions and potential impact on the multimedia field.
5. A concise statement (one sentence) of the PhD thesis contribution for which the award is being given. This statement will appear on the award certificate and on the website.

The nomination rules are:

1. The nominee can be any member of the scientific community.
2. The nominator must be a SIGMM member.
3. No self-nomination is allowed.

If a particular thesis is considered to be of exceptional merit but not selected for the award in a given year, the selection committee (at its sole discretion) may elect to retain the submission for consideration in at most two following years. The candidate will be invited to resubmit his/her work in these years.

A thesis is considered to be outstanding if:

1. Theoretical contributions are significant and application to multimedia is demonstrated.
2. Applications to multimedia is outstanding, techniques are backed by solid theory with clear demonstration that algorithms can be applied in new domains –  e.g., algorithms must be demonstrably scalable in application in terms of robustness, convergence and complexity.

The submission process of nominations will be preceded by the call for nominations. The call of nominations will be widely publicized by the SIGMM awards committee and by the SIGMM Executive Board at the different SIGMM venues, such as during the SIGMM premier ACM Multimedia conference (at the SIGMM Business Meeting) on the SIGMM web site, via SIGMM mailing list, and via SIGMM e-newsletter between September and December of the previous year.

Submission Process

• Register an account at https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/SIGMM2012/  and upload one copy of the nominated PhD thesis. The nominee will receive a Paper ID after the submission.
• The nominator must then collate other materials detailed in the previous section and upload them as supplementary materials, except the endorsement letters, which must be emailed separately as detailed below.
• Contact your referees and ask them to send all endorsement letters to sigmmaward@gmail.com with the title: “PhD Thesis Award Endorsement Letter for [YourName]”. The web administrator will acknowledge the receipt and the submission CMT website will reflect the status of uploaded documents and endorsement letters.

It is the responsibility of the nominator to follow the process and make sure documentation is complete. Thesis with incomplete documentation will be considered invalid.

Selection Committee

For the period 2013-2014, the award selection committee consists of:

• Prof. Kiyo Aizawa (aizawa@hal.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp) from University of Tokyo, Japan
• Prof. Alan Hanjalic (A.Hanjalic@tudelf.nl) from TU Delf, Netherlands
• Prof. Baochun Li (bli@eecg.toronto.edu) from University of Toronto, Canada.

for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications

Award Description

This award is presented every year to a researcher who has made significant and lasting contributions to multimedia computing, communication and applications. Outstanding technical contributions through research and practice are recognized. Towards this goal, contributions are considered from academia and industry that focus on major advances in multimedia including multimedia processing, multimedia content analysis, multimedia systems, multimedia network protocols and services, and multimedia applications and interfaces. The award recognizes members of the community for long-term technical accomplishments or those who have made a notable impact through a significant technical innovation. The selection committee focuses on candidates’ contributions as judged by innovative ideas, influence in the community, and/or the technical/social impact resulting from their work. The award includes a $1000 honorarium, an award certificate of recognition, and an invitation for the recipient to present a keynote talk at a current year’s SIGMM-sponsored conference, the ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM Multimedia). A public citation for the award will be placed on the SIGMM website.

Funding

The award honorarium, the award certificate of recognition and travel expenses to the ACM International Conference on Multimedia is fully sponsored by the SIGMM budget.

Nomination Process

Nominations are solicited by May 31, 2013 with decision made by July 30 2013, in time to allow the above recognition and award presentation at ACM Multimedia 2013.

Nominations for the award must include:

1. A statement summarizing the candidate’s accomplishments, description of the significance of the work, and justification of the nomination (two pages maximum);
2. Curriculum Vitae of the nominee;
3. Three endorsement letters supporting the nomination including the significant contributions of the candidate. Each endorsement should be no longer than 500 words with clear specification of nominee contributions and impact on the multimedia field;
4. A concise statement (one sentence) of the achievement(s) for which the award is being given. This statement will appear on the award certificate and on the website.

The nomination rules are: The nominee can be any member of the scientific community.

1. The nominator must be a SIGMM member.
2. No self-nomination is allowed.
3. Nominations that do not result in an award will be valid for two further years. After three years a revised nomination can be resubmitted.
4. The SIGMM elected officers as well as members of the Awards Selection Committee are not eligible.

Please submit your nomination to the award committee by email.

Committee

• Larry Rowe (rowe@fxpal.com)
• Tat-Seng Chua (chuats@comp.nus.edu.sg)
• Rainer Lienhart (rainer.lienhart@informatik.uni-augsburg.de)

Previous Recipients

• 2012: Hong-Jiang Zhang (pioneering contributions to and leadership in media computing including content-based media analysis and retrieval, and their applications).
• 2011: Shi-Fu Chang (for pioneering research and inspiring contributions in multimedia analysis and retrieval).
• 2010: Ramesh Jain (for pioneering research and inspiring leadership that transformed multimedia information processing to enhance the quality of life and visionary leadership of the multimedia community).
• 2009: Lawrence A. Rowe (for pioneering research in continuous media software systems and visionary leadership of the multimedia research community).
• 2008: Ralf Steinmetz (for pioneering work in multimedia communications and the fundamentals of multimedia synchronization).

The Editor-in-Chief of ACM TOMCCAP invites you to nominate candidates for the “ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications Nicolas D. Georganas Best Paper Award”.

The award is given annually to the author(s) of an outstanding paper published in ACM TOMCCAP within the previous legal year from January 1 until December 31. The award carries a plaque as well as travel funds to the ACM MM conference where the awardee(s) will be honored.

Procedure

Nominations for the award must include the following:
– A statement describing the technical contributions of the nominated paper and a description of the significance of the paper. The statement should not exceed 500 words. No self-nomination is accepted.
– Two additional supporting statements by recognized experts in the field regarding the technical contribution of the paper and its significance to the respective field.

Only papers published in regular issues (no Special Issues) can be nominated.

Nominations will be reviewed by the Selection Committee and the winning paper will finally be voted by the TOMCCAP Editorial Board.

Deadline

Deadline for nominations of papers published in 2012 (Volume 8) is the 15th of June 2013.

Contact

Please send your nominations to the Editor-in-Chief at steinmetz.eic@kom.tu-darmstadt.de
If you have questions, please contact the TOMCCAP information director at TOMCCAP@kom.tu-darmstadt.de

Further details can be found at http://tomccap.acm.org/

ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications (ACM – TOMCCAP)

Deadline for Proposal Submission: May, 1st 2013

Notification: June, 1st 2013

http://tomccap.acm.org/

ACM – TOMCCAP is one of the world’s leading journals on multimedia. As in previous years we are planning to publish a special issue in 2014. Proposals are accepted until May, 1st 2013. Each special issue is the responsibility of guest editors. If you wish to guest edit a special issue you should prepare a proposal as outlined below, then send this via e-mail to EiC Ralf Steinmetz(steinmetz.eic@kom.tu-darmstadt.de)

Proposals should:

• Cover a current or emerging topic in the area of multimedia
  computing, communications and applications;
• Set out the importance of the special issue’s topic in that area;
• Give a strategy for the recruitment of high quality papers;
• Indicate a draft time-scale in which the special issue could be
  produced (paper writing, reviewing, and submission of final copies
  to TOMCCAP), assuming the proposal is accepted.

As in the previous years, the special issue will be published as online-only issue in the ACM Digital Library. This gives the guest editors higher flexibility in the review process and the number of papers to be accepted, while yet ensuring a timely publication.A notification of acceptance for the proposals will be given until June, 1st 2013. Once a proposal is accepted we will contact you to discuss the further process.

For questions please contact:

Ralf Steinmetz – Editor in Chief (steinmetz.eic@kom.tu-darmstadt.de)
Sebastian Schmidt – Information Director (TOMCCAP@kom.tu-darmstadt.de)

SIGMM Education Column of this issue highlights a new book, titled “Visual Information Retrieval using Java and LIRE,” which gives an introduction to the fields of information retrieval and visual information retrieval and points out selected methods, as well as their use and implementation within Java and more specifically LIRE, a Java CBIR library. The book is authored by Dr. Mathias Lux, from Klagenfurt University, Austria, and Prof. Oge Marques, of Florida Atlantic University, and it is published in the Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services by Morgan & Claypool.

The basic motivation for writing this book was the need for a fundamental course book that contained just the necessary knowledge to get students started with content-based image retrieval. The book is based on lectures given by the authors over the last years and has been designed to fulfill that need. It will also provide developers for content-based image solutions with a head start by explaining the most relevant concepts and practical requirements.

The book begins with a short introduction, followed by explanations of information retrieval and retrieval evaluation. Visual features are then explained, and practical problems and common solutions are outlined. Indexing strategies of visual features, including linear search, nearest neighbor search, hashing and bag of visual words, are discussed next, and the use of these strategies with LIRE is shown. Finally, LIRE is described in detail, to allow for employment of the library in various contexts and for extension of the functions provided.

There is also a companion website for the book (http://www.lire-project.net), which gives pointers to additional resources and will be updated with slides, figures, teaching materials and code samples.