News & Events

1,299 News items and Awards found.


  •  NEWS    Arvind Raghunathan delivers Keynote at University of Edinburgh
    Date: July 4, 2019
    Where: University of Edinburgh
    MERL Contact: Arvind Raghunathan
    Research Area: Optimization
    Brief
    • Arvind Raghunathan, of MERL's Data Analytics group, will deliver a keynote titled "Embedding Perfect Structures in Process Systems" in the School of Engineering at University of Edinburgh. Abstract of the talk can be found in the link below.
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  •  NEWS    Arvind Raghunathan delivers seminar at Imperial College London
    Date: July 2, 2019
    Where: Imperial College London
    MERL Contact: Arvind Raghunathan
    Research Area: Optimization
    Brief
    • Arvind Raghunathan, of MERL's Data Analytics group, will deliver a seminar titled "Chordal Completions – Semidefinite Programming and Minimum Completions" in the Computational Optimisation Group at Imperial College London. Abstract of the talk can be found in the link below.
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  •  NEWS    MERL researcher Stefano Di Cairano taught short course for European Embedded Control Institute
    Date: June 10, 2019 - June 14, 2019
    Where: Paris
    MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization
    Brief
    • MERL researcher Stefano Di Cairano and Prof. Ilya Kolmanovsky, Dept. Aerospace Engineering, the University of Michigan, were invited to teach a class on "Predictive and Optimization Based Control for Automotive and Aerospace Application" at the 2019 International Graduate School in Control, of the European Embedded Control Institute (EECI). Every year EECI invites world renown experts to teach 21-hours class modules, mostly for PhD students but also for professionals, on selected control subjects. Stefano and Ilya's class was attended by 30 "students" from both academia and industry, from all around the world, interested in automotive and aerospace control. The module described the fundamentals of modeling and control design in automotive and aerospace through lectures, real world examples and exercises, and placed particular emphasis on techniques such as MPC, reference governors, and optimal control.
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  •  NEWS    The Ab Initio paper selected as "HOT Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics article" and is made free to access the end of July 2019
    Date: June 12, 2019
    Where: Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics – Published 22 Feb 2019
    MERL Contact: Chungwei Lin
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Multi-Physical Modeling
    Brief
    • The journal "Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (PCCP)" selects a few well-received articles highlighted as HOT by the handling editor or referees. The following paper "Band Alignment in Quantum Wells from Automatically Tuned DFT+U" with MERL authors Grigory Kolesov, Chungwei Lin, Andrew Knyazev, Keisuke Kojima, Joseph Katz has been selected as a 2019 HOT Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics article, and is made free to access until the end of July 2019. This paper provides a semi-empirical methodology to compute the lattice and electronic structures of systems composed of 400+ atoms. The efficiency of this method allows for realistic simulations of interfaces between semiconductors, which is nearly impossible using the existing methods due to the extremely large degrees of freedom involved. The formalism is tested against a few established band alignments and then applied to determine the band gaps of quantum wells; the agreement is within the experimental uncertainty.
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  •  NEWS    Mouhacine Benosman to deliver keynote at the mini-symposium 'Data assimilation in Model Order Techniques for Computational Mechanics'
    Date & Time: July 29, 2019; 10 AM
    Where: US National Congress on Computational Mechanics 2019, in Austin Texas
    MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
    Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
    Brief
    • MERL researcher Mouhacine Benosman will present his work on 'Learning-based Robust Stabilization for Reduced-Order Models of 3D Boussinesq Equations' as a keynote speaker at the mini-symposium 'Data assimilation in Model Order Techniques for Computational Mechanics', during the next US National Congress on Computational Mechanics 2019, in Austin Texas.
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  •  AWARD    MERL Researchers Won IEEE ICC Best Paper Award
    Date: May 22, 2019
    Awarded to: Siriramya Bhamidipati, Kyeong Jin Kim, Hongbo Sun, Philip Orlik
    MERL Contact: Hongbo Sun
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Machine Learning, Signal Processing, Information Security
    Brief
    • MERL researchers, Kyeong Jin Kim, Hongbo Sun, Philip Orlik, along with lead author and former MERL intern Siriramya Bhamidipati were awarded the Smart Grid Symposium Best Paper Award at this year's International Conference on Communications (ICC) held in Shanghai, China. There paper titled "GPS Spoofing Detection and Mitigation in PMUs Using Distributed Multiple Directional Antennas," described a technique to rapidly detect and mitigate GPS timing attacks/errors via hardware (antennas) and signal processing (Kalman Filtering).
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  •  NEWS    IEEE Control Systems Magazine interviews Stefano Di Cairano
    Date: April 15, 2019
    MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
    Research Area: Control
    Brief
    • Stefano Di Cairano, senior team leader and distinguished research scientist in the Control and Dynamical Systems group, was interviewed in the April 2019 issue of IEEE Control Systems Magazine. Stefano described himself, promising opportunities in the control field, and how his passion for control research fits well into the industrial research laboratory setting at MERL. It is very good reading for any young researcher considering possible career trajectories.
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  •  AWARD    MERL researcher wins IEEE Young Author Best Paper award
    Date: January 2, 2019
    Awarded to: Siheng Chen
    Research Area: Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL researcher, Siheng Chen, has won an IEEE Young Author Best Paper award for his paper entitled "Discrete Signal Processing on Graphs: Sampling Theory". This paper, published in the December 2015 issue of IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, proposes a sampling theory for signals that are supported on either directed or undirected graphs. The theory follows the same paradigm as classical sampling theory and shows that perfect recovery is possible for graph signals bandlimited under the graph Fourier transform. The award honors the authors of an especially meritorious paper dealing with a subject related to IEEE's technical scope and appearing in one if its journals within a three year window of eligibility.
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  •  AWARD    MERL researcher wins Best Visualization Note Award at PacificVis2019 Conference
    Date: April 23, 2019
    Awarded to: Teng-yok Lee
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Data Analytics, Machine Learning
    Brief
    • MERL researcher Teng-yok Lee has won the Best Visualization Note Award at the PacificVis 2019 conference held in Bangkok Thailand, from April 23-26, 2019. The paper entitled "Space-Time Slicing: Visualizing Object Detector Performance in Driving Video Sequences" presents a visualization method called Space-Time Slicing to assist a human developer in the development of object detectors for driving applications without requiring labeled data. Space-Time Slicing reveals patterns in the detection data that can suggest the presence of false positives and false negatives.
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  •  NEWS    Stefano Di Cairano to give invited address at 3rd IAVSD Workshop on Dynamics of Road Vehicles: Connected and Automated Vehicles
    Date: April 28, 2019
    Where: 3rd IAVSD Workshop on Dynamics of Road Vehicles: Connected and Automated Vehicles
    MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
    Research Areas: Control, Optimization, Robotics
    Brief
    • Stefano Di Cairano, Distinguished Scientist and Senior Team Leader in the Control and Dynamical Systems Group, will give an invited talk entitled: "Modularity, integration and synergy in architectures for autonomous driving" that covers recent work in the lab concerning building a modular, robust control framework for autonomous driving.
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  •  NEWS    IEEE-NH ComSig lecture by MERL's Petros Boufounos
    Date: April 4, 2019
    Where: Nashua Public Library, Nashua, NH
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL's Petros Boufounos gave a lecture for the IEEE-NH ComSig chapter at the Nashua Public Library as part of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer series.

      Title: "An Inverse Problem Framework for Array Processing Systems."

      Abstract: Array-based sensing systems, such as ultrasonic, radar and optical (LIDAR) are becoming increasingly important in a variety of applications, including robotics, autonomous driving, medical imaging, and virtual reality, among others. This has led to continuous improvements in sensing hardware, but also to increasing demand for theory and methods to inform the system design and improve the processing. In this talk we will discuss how recent advances in formulating and solving inverse problems, such as compressed sensing, blind deconvolution, and sparse signal modeling can be applied to significantly reduce the cost and improve the capabilities of array-based and multichannel sensing systems. We show that these systems share a common mathematical framework, which allows us to describe both the acquisition hardware and the scene being acquired. Under this framework we can exploit prior knowledge on the scene, the system, and a variety of errors that might occur, allowing for significant improvements in the reconstruction accuracy. Furthermore, we can consider the design of the system itself in the context of the inverse problem, leading to designs that are more efficient, more accurate, or less expensive, depending on the application. In the talk we will explore applications of this model to LIDAR and depth sensing, radar and distributed radar, and ultrasonic sensing. In the context of these applications, we will describe how different models can lead to improved specifications in ultrasonic systems, robustness to position and timing errors in distributed array systems, and cost reduction and new capabilities in LIDAR systems.
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  •  NEWS    MERL presenting 16 papers at ICASSP 2019
    Date: May 12, 2019 - May 17, 2019
    Where: Brighton, UK
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Anoop Cherian; Chiori Hori; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Jonathan Le Roux; Dehong Liu; Hassan Mansour; Tim K. Marks; Philip V. Orlik; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • MERL researchers will be presenting 16 papers at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing (ICASSP), which is being held in Brighton, UK from May 12-17, 2019. Topics to be presented include recent advances in speech recognition, audio processing, scene understanding, computational sensing, and parameter estimation. MERL is also a sponsor of the conference and will be participating in the student career luncheon; please join us at the lunch to learn about our internship program and career opportunities.

      ICASSP is the flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in signal and information processing. The event attracts more than 2000 participants each year.
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  •  NEWS    Deep Learning-Based Photonic Circuit Design in Scientific Reports
    Date: February 4, 2019
    Where: Scientific Reports, open-access journal from Nature Research
    MERL Contacts: Devesh K. Jha; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Chungwei Lin; Kieran Parsons; Bingnan Wang
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning
    Brief
    • MERL researchers developed a novel design method enhanced by modern deep learning techniques for optimizing photonic integrated circuits (PIC). The developed technique employs residual deep neural networks (DNNs) to understand physics underlaying complicated lightwave propagations through nano-structured photonic devices. It was demonstrated that the trained DNN achieves excellent prediction to design power splitting nanostructures having various target power ratios. The work was published in Scientific Reports, which is an online open access journal from Nature Research, having high-impact articles in the research community.
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  •  NEWS    Anthony Vetro delivers keynote on edge intelligence at IEEE conference on AI circuits and systems
    Date: March 20, 2019
    Where: Hsinchu, Taiwan
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Research Area: Artificial Intelligence
    Brief
    • Anthony Vetro gave a keynote at the inaugural IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits and Systems (AICAS), which was held in Hsinchu, Taiwan from March 18-20, 2019. The talk focused on edge intelligence for optimized systems and high-performance devices.

      Abstract: The combination of IoT sensing, edge computing and AI algorithms is creating new opportunities to use real-time data to optimize system capabilities and increase device performance. In the manufacturing domain, edge intelligence allows us to realize various forms of anomaly detection, predict the lifetime or maintenance schedule of components, and adaptive learn improved control policies. Connected cars will benefit from edge intelligence to improve safety and optimize traffic flows. Additionally, the parameters of a circuit can be automatically tuned using data-driven machine learning techniques to increase efficiency and performance. This presentation highlights the numerous benefits of the edge intelligence framework, and identifies several open challenges and issues.
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  •  NEWS    MERL presenting 4 papers at OFC, including an invited talk
    Date: March 3, 2019 - March 7, 2019
    Where: San Diego, CA
    MERL Contacts: Devesh K. Jha; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Chungwei Lin; Kieran Parsons; Bingnan Wang; Ye Wang
    Research Areas: Communications, Machine Learning, Optimization, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL researchers are presenting 4 papers at the OSA Optical Fiber Conference (OFC), which is being held in San Diego from March 3-7, 2019. Topics to be presented include recent advances in nonbinary polar codes, joint polar-coded shaping, and deep learning-based photonics circuit design. Additionally, recent work on multiset-partition distribution matching is presented as an invited talk.

      OFC is the flagship conference of the OSA, and the world's most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in optics and photonics. The event attracts more than 10000 participants each year.
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  •  NEWS    MERL's seamless speech recognition technology featured in Mitsubishi Electric Corporation press release
    Date: February 13, 2019
    Where: Tokyo, Japan
    MERL Contacts: Jonathan Le Roux; Gordon Wichern
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
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  •  NEWS    Uros Kalabic spoke on reference governors at the MSU Mechanical Engineering Seminar
    Date: February 12, 2019
    Where: Michigan State University
    MERL Contacts: Scott A. Bortoff; Stefano Di Cairano; Abraham Goldsmith
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
    Brief
    • Uros Kalabic, of MERL's Control and Dynamical Systems group, gave a talk at the Michigan State University Mechanical Engineering Seminar. The talk, entitled "Reference governors: Industrial applications and theoretical advances," covered some of the exciting research being done at MERL on reference governors and briefly described MERL's other research areas. The abstract of the talk can be found via the link below.
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  •  NEWS    Mouhacine Benosman co-edited a special issue on Learning-based Adaptive Control: Theory and Applications
    Date: February 4, 2019
    MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
    Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
    Brief
    • Mouhacine Benosman is a guest editor of a special issue on Learning-based Adaptive Control: Theory and Application, recently published by the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing. Other guest editors included Professor F.L. Lewis (University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute), Professor M. Guay (Queen's University), and Professor D. Owens (The University of Sheffield).

      The special issue presents results of current research on learning-based adaptive methods, merging together model-based and data-driven machine learning approaches.

      More information on the content of this special issue can be found at:
      https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10991115/2019/33/2.
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  •  NEWS    Turbulent flow paper selected as "Editors Suggestion" in journal Physical Review Fluids
    Date: January 11, 2019
    Where: PHYSICAL REVIEW FLUIDS, 4, 013801 – Published 11 January 2019
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
    Brief
    • The journal Physical Review Fluids has recently instituted "...a service to our readers, we are formally marking a small number of papers published in Physical Review Fluids that the editors and referees find of particular interest, importance, or clarity." The following paper with MERL authors Saleh Nabi and Piyush Grover was so honored in the January 2019 issue: "Reduced-order modeling of fully turbulent buoyancy-driven flows using the Green's function method.".
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  •  AWARD    Former Intern Receives IBM Scientific Award Honorable Mention
    Date: January 16, 2019
    Awarded to: Daniel Dinis
    Research Areas: Communications, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Former MERL intern Daniel Dinis from University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal has received the 2018 IBM Scientific Award with Honorable Mention referring to the contributions on "Real-time Tunable Delta-sigma modulators for All-Digital RF Transmitters" in his Ph.D. study.

      The award-winning work includes research conducted under the supervision of Arnaldo Oliveira and José Neto Vieira, professors from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DETI) of the UA, as well as contributions made during Daniel's 7 month internship in 2017 at MERL.

      The ceremony for the presentation of the 28th IBM Scientific Prize took on January 16th, at the Noble Hall of the Superior Technical Institute. It was chaired by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, President of the Portuguese Republic.
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  •  NEWS    Mouhacine Benosman to speak at the Aerospace Engineering Department of Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    Date: February 1, 2019
    Where: WPI
    MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
    Brief
    • Mouhacine Benosman has been invited to give a talk at the Aerospace Engineering Department of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) on Lyapunov-based model reduction and stabilization of PDEs, with application to the Boussinesq equation. Further details of the talk can be found in the below link.
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  •  NEWS    Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and MERL Press Release Describes Future Digitally Controlled Power Amplifier
    Date: January 10, 2019
    Where: Tokyo, Japan
    MERL Contacts: Mouhacine Benosman; Philip V. Orlik; Koon Hoo Teo
    Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced today its development of the world's first ultra-wideband digitally controlled gallium nitride (GaN) amplifier, which is compatible with a world-leading range of sub-6GHz bands focused on fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication systems. With a power efficiency rating of above 40%, the amplifier is expected to contribute to large-capacity communication and reduce the power consumption of mobile base stations.

      MERL and Mitsubishi Electric researchers collaborated to develop digital control methods for amplifiers achieving high-efficiency of 40% and above, with 110% of the fractional bandwidth over frequency range 1.4-4.8 GHz. The digital control signals are designed using a learning-function based on Maisart®.

      Please see the link below for the full Mitsubishi Electric press release text.
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  •  NEWS    Petros Boufounos is appointed 2019 IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer
    Date: December 12, 2018
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL's Petros Boufounos has been appointed as a member of the 2019 class of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Class of Distinguished Lecturers for the term of 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2020.

      The IEEE SPS Distinguished Lecturer (DL) Program provides a means for Chapters to have access to well-known educators and authors in the fields of signal processing to lecture at Chapter meetings. Each year, five DLs are appointed by the society. In addition to Dr. Boufounos, his year's class includes Israel Cohen (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology), Janusz Konrad (Boston University), Anna Scaglione (Arizona State University), and Rui Zhang (National University of Singapore).
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  •  AWARD    R&D100 award for Deep Learning-based Water Detector
    Date: November 16, 2018
    Awarded to: Ziming Zhang, Alan Sullivan, Hideaki Maehara, Kenji Taira, Kazuo Sugimoto
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning
    Brief
    • Researchers and developers from MERL, Mitsubishi Electric and Mitsubishi Electric Engineering (MEE) have been recognized with an R&D100 award for the development of a deep learning-based water detector. Automatic detection of water levels in rivers and streams is critical for early warning of flash flooding. Existing systems require a height gauge be placed in the river or stream, something that is costly and sometimes impossible. The new deep learning-based water detector uses only images from a video camera along with 3D measurements of the river valley to determine water levels and warn of potential flooding. The system is robust to lighting and weather conditions working well during the night as well as during fog or rain. Deep learning is a relatively new technique that uses neural networks and AI that are trained from real data to perform human-level recognition tasks. This work is powered by Mitsubishi Electric's Maisart AI technology.
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  •  NEWS    MERL Control and Dynamical Systems Group presented 8 papers at IFAC NMPC conference
    Date: August 19, 2018 - August 22, 2018
    Where: IFAC NMPC, Madison, WI
    MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
    Research Area: Control
    Brief
    • The 6th IFAC Conference on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC), http://www.nmpc2018.org/, is a highly focused conference that attracts experts in this area from around the world. Members of the Control and Dynamical Systems group presented 8 papers (out of the 149 at the conference!) Stefano Di Cairano delivered one of the 7 plenary lectures entitled "Contract-Based Design of Control Architectures by Model Predictive Control.".
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