News

WNCG students Marius Facktor and Abhinau Venkataramanan and WNCG alumnus Praful Gupta from Prof. Al Bovik’s Laboratory for Image & Video Engineering (LIVE) have been named Phase 2 winners in the Enhancing Computer Vision for Public Safety Challenge. The challenge is hosted by the Public Safety Communications Research Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The competition aims to support public safety missions by advancing computer vision algorithms and no-reference (NR) metrics that assess image or video quality.

First-year graduate student Joshua Ebenezer has received the Nilanjan Ganguly Memorial Award for his undergraduate thesis on haze- and fog-affected images and videos. The award designates the “best B.Tech thesis in the Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering Department” at IIT Khargapur and is given annually to a single student. The award also includes a cash prize for the recipient from the Ganguly family. 

WNCG Alumnus Vishal Monga has led two teams of researchers to success at the New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement (NTIRE) worldwide competition. Monga received his Ph.D.EE from Texas ECE in 2005, advised by Prof. Brian L. Evans at WNCG. He now runs the Information Processing & Algorithms Laboratory at Penn State’s College of Engineering and holds the title of Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Texas ECE Professor Al Bovik’s neuroscience-based Visual Information Fidelity (VIF) picture quality measurement tool has been built into the core of Netflix’s quality system which controls the quality of every video streamed by Netflix to all customers world-wide. VIF is a full reference image quality assessment index that is based on natural scene statistics, and on a model of the type of image information that is extracted by the human visual system. It was developed by Prof.

Each year, the UT Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) hosts a series of Senior Design Projects, which the undergraduate student teams present at the end of each semester during the Senior Design Open House. The day-long Open House event provides a unique opportunity for students to showcase and demonstrate their work. While WNCG consists mostly of graduate students, a select few undergraduates also engage in research projects and startups with WNCG faculty and students.

An incubator of cutting-edge technologies and digital creativity, SXSW Interactive 2015 featured five days of presentations and panels from the brightest minds in emerging technology. Special programs showcased new websites, video games and startup ideas from the community.

WNCG Faculty and students met on Sunday with researchers from the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) and other UT Austin Cockrell School Engineers during the first-ever UT Village at SXSW Interactive 2015. This year's event featured panels and interactive research demonstrations and was open to all SXSW Interactive 2015 Badge Holders. Click the image below to view the complete slideshow from the day's events.  

Every few years, WNCG welcomes a new Director and Associate Director from among its faculty ranks. With an academic culture that encourages openness and research collaborations among equals, the rotation of Directors provides each faculty member with the opportunity to lead WNCG.

While much work has been done to further image quality for cameras and smart phones in the visible light spectrum, WNCG student Todd Goodall and his advisor Prof. Bovik have expanded their research to include the quality of infrared images. “As far as Prof. Bovik and I know, no one has thoroughly studied the natural scene statistics of infrared images,” Goodall states. “Other general image statistics have been studied, but no one has considered the perceptually-relevant natural statistics..”