News & Events

1,502 News items, Awards, Events and Talks related to MERL and its staff.


  •  NEWS    MERL researcher invited to talk at OFC 2015 by Digital Transmission Systems Subcommittee
    Date: June 6, 2014
    Where: Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC)
    MERL Contact: Toshiaki Koike-Akino
    Research Areas: Communications, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Toshiaki Koike-Akino has accepted the invitation to give a talk on coded modulation formats with optimized constellations in Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC 2015).
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  •  NEWS    MERL to co-sponsor HSCMA 2014 Joint Workshop on Hands-free Speech Communication and Microphone Arrays
    Date: May 12, 2014 - May 14, 2014
    Where: Hands-free Speech Communication and Microphone Arrays (HSCMA)
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • MERL is a sponsor for the 4th Joint Workshop on Hands-free Speech Communication and Microphone Arrays (HSCMA 2014), held in Nancy, France, in May 2014.
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  •  AWARD    GRSS 2014 Symposium Prize Paper Award
    Date: May 1, 2014
    Awarded to: Dehong Liu and Petros T. Boufounos
    Awarded for: "Synthetic Aperture Imaging Using a Randomly Steered Spotlight"
    Awarded by: IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS)
    MERL Contacts: Dehong Liu; Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Area: Computational Sensing
    Brief
    • Dehong Liu and Petros T. Boufounos are the recipients of the the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society 2014 Symposium Prize Paper Award for their paper "Synthetic Aperture Imaging Using a Randomly Steered Spotlight," presented at IGARSS 2013 (TR2013-070).
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  •  NEWS    MERL Researcher named co-chair of GlobalSIP 2014 Symposium on Machine Learning Applications in Speech Processing
    Date: May 1, 2014
    Where: IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP)
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • John R. Hershey is Co-Chair of the GlobalSIP 2014 Symposium on Machine Learning.
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  •  AWARD    Awaya Prize Young Researcher Award
    Date: March 11, 2014
    Awarded to: Yuuki Tachioka
    Awarded for: "Effectiveness of discriminative approaches for speech recognition under noisy environments on the 2nd CHiME Challenge"
    Awarded by: Acoustical Society of Japan (ASJ)
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • MELCO researcher Yuuki Tachioka received the Awaya Prize Young Researcher Award from the Acoustical Society of Japan (ASJ) for "effectiveness of discriminative approaches for speech recognition under noisy environments on the 2nd CHiME Challenge", which was based on joint work with MERL Speech & Audio team researchers Shinji Watanabe, Jonathan Le Roux and John R. Hershey.
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  •  NEWS    Guest Editor for IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Special Issue on Signal Processing Techniques for Assisted Listening
    Date: March 1, 2014
    Where: IEEE Signal Processing Society
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • John R. Hershey is Guest Editor for the Special Issue on Signal Processing Techniques for Assisted Listening of the IEEE Signal Processing.
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  •  NEWS    Member of the Optical Communications team elected to OFC Technical Committee
    Date: February 15, 2014
    Where: Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC)
    Research Areas: Communications, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • David S. Millar has been elected to the 2015 OFC Technical Committee for Digital electronic subsystems and transceivers.
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  •  NEWS    MERL Researcher appointed Senior Area Editor for IEEE Signal Processing Letters
    Date: February 11, 2014
    Where: IEEE Signal Processing Letters
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Brief
    • Petros Boufounos was appointed as a Senior Area Editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters.
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  •  NEWS    Members of the Speech & Audio team elected to IEEE Technical Committees
    Date: January 1, 2014
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • Jonathan Le Roux, Shinji Watanabe and John R. Hershey have been elected for 3-year terms to Technical Committees of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. Jonathan has been elected to the IEEE Audio and Acoustic Signal Processing Technical Committee (AASP-TC), and Shinji and John to the Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee (SL-TC). Members of the Speech & Audio team now together hold four TC positions, as John also serves on the AASP-TC.
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  •  NEWS    Fast three-phase load-flow analysis algorithms developed by MERL included in MELCO's Smart Grid Demonstration Project
    Date: February 13, 2014
    MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
    Research Area: Data Analytics
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced that it has developed energy loss-reduction technology that uses algorithms for fast analysis of three-phase electricity developed by MERL to establish optimal coordination of power-distribution grids for reductions in energy loss and power-generation costs. The technology was achieved under Mitsubishi Electric's Smart Grid Demonstration Project.
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  •  NEWS    MERL's High-speed optimization algorithms showcased at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation annual R&D Open House
    Date: February 13, 2014
    MERL Contact: Matthew Brand
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced its development of advanced optimization algorithms and high-speed calculation methods aimed at optimizing the performance of three practical systems: laser-processing machines for high-speed cutting of sheet metal using the shortest possible trajectories, moon probes achieved with minimized fuel consumption, and particle beam therapies for prompt medical treatments.
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  •  NEWS    Prediction algorithms developed by MERL showcased for automotive HMI
    Date: February 10, 2014
    MERL Contacts: Jonathan Le Roux; Daniel N. Nikovski; Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Corporation demonstrated an ultra-simple HMI for in-car device operation using algorithms developed by MERL to predict user actions and destinations.
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  •  EVENT    107th MPEG meeting
    Date: Monday, January 13, 2014 - Friday, January 17, 2014
    Location: San Jose, CA
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • MERL is a sponsor for the 107th MPEG meeting to be held in San Jose, CA, in January 2014. MERL researcher Anthony Vetro serves as Head of the US Delegation to MPEG.
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  •  EVENT    MERL intern recruiting and cupcakes
    Date & Time: Wednesday, November 6, 2013; 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
    Location: MIT, Kiva room @CSAIL
    MERL Contact: Matthew Brand
    Brief
    • Every year, MIT neighbor Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs hires 40-60 talented and motivated graduate students for summer internships in CS/EE-oriented research projects, aimed at real-world impact and high-quality publications. Join us for our kick-off recruiting reception at the Kiva/Patel room Wednesday 1-3pm. There will be a short overview of current research areas, confections, and MERL researchers on hand to discuss research opportunities. .
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  •  EVENT    SANE 2013 - Speech and Audio in the Northeast
    Date & Time: Thursday, October 24, 2013; 8:45 AM - 5:00 PM
    Location: Columbia University
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • SANE 2013, a one-day event gathering researchers and students in speech and audio from the Northeast of the American continent, will be held on Thursday October 24, 2013 at Columbia University, in New York City.

      A follow-up to SANE 2012 held in October 2012 at MERL in Cambridge, MA, this year's SANE will be held in conjunction with the WASPAA workshop, held October 20-23 in upstate New York. WASPAA attendees are welcome and encouraged to attend SANE.

      SANE 2013 will feature invited speakers from the Northeast, as well as from the international community. It will also feature a lively poster session during lunch time, open to both students and researchers.

      SANE 2013 is organized by Prof. Dan Ellis (Columbia University), Jonathan Le Roux (MERL) and John R. Hershey (MERL).
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  •  TALK    The Wireless Control Network: A New Approach For Control Over Networks
    Date & Time: Friday, October 18, 2013; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Shreyas Sundaram, University of Waterloo
    MERL Host: Mouhacine Benosman
    Abstract
    • This talk will describe a method to stabilize a plant with a network of resource-constrained wireless nodes. As opposed to traditional networked control schemes where the nodes simply route information to and from a dedicated controller, our approach treats the network itself as the controller. Specifically, we formulate a strategy where each node repeatedly updates its state to be a linear combination of the states of neighboring nodes. We show that this causes the entire network to behave as a linear dynamical system, with sparsity constraints imposed by the network topology. We provide a numerical design procedure to determine the appropriate linear combinations for each node so that the transmissions of the nodes closest to the actuators are stabilizing. We also make connections to decentralized control theory and the concept of fixed modes to provide topological conditions under which stabilization is possible. We show that this "Wireless Control Network" requires low computational and communication overhead, simplifies transmission scheduling, and enables compositional design. We also consider the issue of security in this control scheme. Using structured system theory, we show that a certain number of malicious or misbehaving nodes can be detected and identified provided that the connectivity of the network is sufficiently high.
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  •  TALK    Efficiently sampling wave fields
    Date & Time: Thursday, October 17, 2013; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Prof. Laurent Daudet, Paris Diderot University, France
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Abstract
    • In acoustics, one may wish to acquire a wavefield over a whole spatial domain, while we can only make point measurements (ie, with microphones). Even with few sources, this remains a difficult problem because of reverberation, which can be hard to characterize. This can be seen as a sampling / interpolation problem, and it raises a number of interesting questions: how many sample points are needed, where to choose the sampling points, etc. In this presentation, we will review some case studies, in 2D (vibrating plates) and 3D (room acoustics), with numerical and experimental data, where we have developed sparse models, possibly with additional 'structures', based on a physical modeling of the acoustic field. These type of models are well suited to reconstruction techniques known as compressed sensing. These principles can also be used for sub-nyquist optical imaging : we will show preliminary experimental results of a new compressive imager, remarkably simple in its principle, using a multiply scattering medium.
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  •  TALK    Embedded Vision R&D at Texas Instruments
    Date & Time: Friday, October 4, 2013; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Goksel Dedeoglu, Texas Instruments
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Abstract
    • There are growing needs to accelerate computer vision algorithms on embedded processors for wide-ranging equipment including mobile phones, network cameras, robots, and automotive safety systems. In our Vision R&D group, we conduct various projects to understand how the vision requirements can be best addressed on Digital Signal Processors (DSP), where the compute bottlenecks are, and how we should evolve our hardware & software architectures to meet our customers' future needs. Towards this end, we build prototypes wherein we design and optimize embedded software for real-world application performance and robustness. In this talk, I will provide examples of vision problems that we have recently tackled.
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  •  AWARD    Awaya Prize Young Researcher Award
    Date: September 26, 2013
    Awarded to: Jonathan Le Roux
    Awarded for: "A new non-negative dynamical system for speech and audio modeling"
    Awarded by: Acoustical Society of Japan (ASJ)
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
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  •  TALK    Design of Active Inputs for Set-Based Fault Diagnosis
    Date & Time: Friday, September 6, 2013; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Davide M. Raimondo, University of Pavia, Italy
    MERL Host: Stefano Di Cairano
    Abstract
    • Although there are many fault diagnosis algorithms available, there has been very little work on the design or modification of control inputs with the aim of increasing the detectability and isolability of faults. The use of such inputs has clear potential for overcoming a central difficulty in fault detection, which is to distinguish the effects of faults from those of disturbances, process uncertainties, etc. Accordingly, the use of active inputs could be a transformative technology in industry, provided that such inputs can be computed reliably and efficiently.
      This presentation discusses new methods for computing active inputs that guarantee that the input-output data of a process will be sufficient to correctly identify a fault from a given library of possible faults. This problem is inherently nonconvex and has a combinatorial dependence on the number of faults considered. To address this, a new formulation is considered, along with related approximations, that is amenable to efficient solution using standard optimization packages (e.g. CPLEX). The theoretical contributions combine ideas from reachability analysis, set-based computations, and optimization theory to exploit detailed problem structure and thereby manage the problem complexity. Comparisons with an existing method show that the proposed formulation provides a dramatic reduction in the required computational effort.
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  •  TALK    Decoupling Systems By Design
    Date & Time: Friday, August 23, 2013; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dr Cornel Sultan, Virginia Tech
    Abstract
    • Coordinate coupling raises serious numerical, analysis, and control design problems that grow with the size of the system. On the other hand, decoupled dynamic equations facilitate all of the above processes since each equation can be treated independently. Unfortunately, due to the inherent heterogeneity typical of most practical, complex systems, these are not naturally decoupled so developing accurate enough decoupled approximations is of interest.

      In this talk the issue of building such accurate decoupled approximations is addressed by leveraging concepts from robust control theory. Specifically, system gains (e.g. energy gain, peak to peak gain) are used to characterize the approximation error. Then some system parameters are selected to minimize this approximation error. The advantage of using system gains is that the decoupling approximation is guaranteed to be accurate over an entire class of signals (e.g. finite energy/finite peak signals). These ideas are illustrated on linearized models of tensegrity structures which are designed to yield accurate decoupled models with respect to all signals of finite energy and finite peak. Further analysis corrects several misconceptions regarding decoupling, system properties, and control design.
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  •  NEWS    IEEE Signal Processing Magazine: publication by Ye Wang, Shantanu D. Rane and others
    Date: August 19, 2013
    Where: IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
    MERL Contact: Ye Wang
    Research Area: Information Security
    Brief
    • The article "Secure Biometrics: Concepts, Authentication Architectures & Challenges" by Rane, S., Wang, Y., Draper, S.C. and Ishwar, P. was published in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
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  •  EVENT    IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Special Issue on 3D Representation, Compression & Rendering
    Date: Thursday, August 1, 2013
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • Anthony Vetro is Guest Editor for the Special Issue on 3D Representation, Compression & Rendering of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.
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  •  TALK    A Dirichlet Process Mixture Model for Clustering of Household Electricity Load Profiles
    Date & Time: Tuesday, July 30, 2013; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Ramon Granell, Oxford University
    MERL Host: Daniel N. Nikovski
    Research Area: Data Analytics
    Abstract
    • We show that real electricity-use patterns can be distinguished using a Bayesian nonparametric model based on the Dirichlet Process Mixture Model. By modelling the load profiles as discrete counters we make use of the Dirichlet-Multinomial distribution. Clusters are computed with the Chinese Restaurant Process method and posterior probabilities distributions estimated with a Gibbs sampling algorithm.
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  •  TALK    Topics in Intelligent Building Systems Control
    Date & Time: Tuesday, July 23, 2013; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Sandipan Mishra, Renssealer Polytechnic Institute
    MERL Host: Stefano Di Cairano
    Abstract
    • This talk will present the breadth of research activities in the Intelligent Systems, Automation & Control Laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, ranging from building systems control to additive manufacturing and adaptive optics. In particular, we will focus on the modeling and control design paradigms for intelligent building systems and smart LED lighting systems. Since building systems have substantial variability of occupancy, usage, ambient environment, and physical properties over time, strategies for "model-free" control algorithms for building temperature control will be illustrated. The seminar will also discuss the state-of-the-art in feedback control of lighting systems and demonstrate the efficacy of distributed control and consensus type algorithms for these large-scale lighting systems. Finally, some interesting examples of bio-inspired estimation from blurry images for adaptive optics will be presented.
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