Fresh News from the MMSP TC

Contributed by Oscar Au (MMSP TC Chair 2012-2013)

The Multimedia Signal Processing Technical Committee (MMSP TC) promotes the advancement of multimedia signal processing technology with special emphasis on the interaction, coordination, synchronization, and joint processing of multimedia and multi-modality signals. In the past, the TC has also served as a home for incubating new areas that do not fall neatly into areas covered by existing TCs.

The MMSP TC organizes annually the MMSP Workshops. MMSP 2013 will be held from September 30 – October 2, 2013, in Pula (Sardinia), Italy, under the theme of multimedia forensics. Plenary/invited talks will be given by Nasir Memon (NYU/Poly), Alan Hanjalic (Delft Univ.), Gene Gheung (NII), Gwenaël Doërr (Technicolor), and Miroslaw Bober, (Univ. of Surrey). MMSP 2014 will be held in October in Djakarta, Indonesia, under the theme of “Internet-of-Thing (IoT) Multimedia”. Proposals for MMSP 2015 are being accepted by the Chair through September 1, 2013. The TC will evaluate these proposals at MMSP 2013.

The MMSP TC is also directly involved in steering and organizing the technical program for the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), held annually in July under the sponsorship of four IEEE societies (Signal Processing, Computer, Communications, and Circuits and Systems). Recently, ICME has been revamped with a highly selective acceptance rate of at most 15% for oral papers and an additional 15% for poster presentations. This year ICME received a total of over 1200 submissions. We aspire for learning to become a key characteristic of the revamped ICME, through tutorials, classes, keynotes, overviews, and of course learning the state-of-the-art directly from the principal researchers in the field. Focused workshops are also an integral part of the conference. In conjunction with ICME 2013, members of the TC organized the Hot3D workshop, which encouraged presentation of early stage, preliminary, and potentially disruptive technologies in 3D Multimedia. ICME 2013 will be held July 15-19 in San Jose, California, while ICME 2014 will be held in Chengdu, China, and ICME 2015 will be held in Torino, Italy.

This year the TC is also involved in organizing a SPS-sponsored competition on “Dynamic Geometry Compression Competition”, with initial entries due soon. Visit the competition website for more information.

TC members are involved in publications such as the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, and IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

New TC members are being sought for a three-year term, beginning January 1, 2014. We are calling for nominations of high-profile multimedia signal processing researchers, who are willing to actively participate in TC activities, including paper reviews and award nominations. We particularly encourage nominations of female candidates and candidates representing Regions 7 (Canada) and 9 (Latin America). Nominations should include (1) percentages of the top-level EDICS areas covered by the candidate, (2) a brief bio (less than 1 page in pure text format), and (3) a sentence stating that the candidate is willing to serve, such as “If elected to the TC, I agree to serve as an active member and will be IEEE Signal Processing Society member from Jan. 1, 2011 to December 31, 2013.” Nominations should be sent to the Chair of the membership & nomination subcommittee, Yap Peng Tan Yap by September 27, 2013. Affiliate Members are always welcome to sign up here. More information can be found at the TC website.