News & Events

1,506 News items, Awards, Events and Talks related to MERL and its staff.


  •  EVENT    ICME 2015 - IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo
    Date: Wednesday, July 1, 2015
    Location: Torino, Italy
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • Anthony Vetro is the General Co-chair of ICME 2015, the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo, to be held in Torino, Italy, in July 2015.
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  •  NEWS    EC Researchers presented paper at WPT 2015 Conference
    Date: May 13, 2015 - May 15, 2015
    MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis; Koon Hoo Teo
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
    Brief
    • Description: Bingnan Wang presented a paper, 'Circularly Polarized Near Field for Resonant Wireless Power Transfer' at the recently held IEEE Wireless Power Transfer Conference in Boulder, Colorado from May 13-15, 2015.
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  •  NEWS    EC Researchers presented 2 papers at CLEO 2015 Conference
    Date: May 10, 2015 - May 15, 2015
    MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Kieran Parsons
    Research Area: Communications
    Brief
    • Toshiaki Koike-Akino presented 'LDPC-coded 16-dimensional modulation based on the Nordstrom--Robinson nonlinear block code,' and 'Phase noise-robust LLR calculation with linear/bilinear transform for LDPC-coded coherent communications,' at the recently held CLEO conference in San Jose, CA.
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  •  NEWS    MERL presented a paper at ICCS meeting
    Date: June 1, 2015
    Where: International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS)
    Brief
    • Andrew Knyazev gave a talk at the International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS), 2015 on Nonsymmetric preconditioning for conjugate gradient and steepest descent methods. The paper was published by Elsevier B.V. in the conference proceedings.
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  •  NEWS    John Hershey gives talk at MIT on Deep Unfolding
    Date: April 28, 2015
    Brief
    • MERL researcher and speech team leader, John Hershey, gave a talk at MIT entitled, "Deep Unfolding: Deriving Novel Deep Network Architectures from Model-based Inference Methods" on April 28, 2015.

      Abstract: Model-based methods and deep neural networks have both been tremendously successful paradigms in machine learning. In model-based methods, problem domain knowledge can be built into the constraints of the model, typically at the expense of difficulties during inference. In contrast, deterministic deep neural networks are constructed in such a way that inference is straightforward, but their architectures are rather generic and it can be unclear how to incorporate problem domain knowledge. This work aims to obtain some of the advantages of both approaches. To do so, we start with a model-based approach and unfold the iterations of its inference method to form a layer-wise structure. This results in novel neural-network-like architectures that incorporate our model-based constraints, but can be trained discriminatively to perform fast and accurate inference. This framework allows us to view conventional sigmoid networks as a special case of unfolding Markov random field inference, and leads to other interesting generalizations. We show how it can be applied to other models, such as non-negative matrix factorization, to obtain a new kind of non-negative deep neural network that can be trained using a multiplicative back propagation-style update algorithm. In speech enhancement experiments we show that our approach is competitive with conventional neural networks, while using fewer parameters.
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  •  NEWS    Nikkei reports on Mitsubishi Electric speech recognition
    Date: April 20, 2015
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric researcher, Yuuki Tachioka of Japan, and MERL researcher, Shinji Watanabe, presented a paper at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing (ICASSP) entitled, "A Discriminative Method for Recurrent Neural Network Language Models". This paper describes a discriminative (language modelling) method for Japanese speech recognition. The Japanese Nikkei newspapers and some other press outlets reported on this method and its performance for Japanese speech recognition tasks.
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  •  NEWS    Multimedia Group researchers presented 8 papers at ICASSP 2015
    Date: April 19, 2015 - April 24, 2015
    Where: IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing (ICASSP)
    MERL Contacts: Anthony Vetro; Hassan Mansour; Petros T. Boufounos; Jonathan Le Roux
    Brief
    • Multimedia Group researchers have presented 8 papers at the recent IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing, which was held in Brisbane, Australia from April 19-24, 2015.
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  •  NEWS    Anthony Vetro appointed as Chair of INCITS L3
    Date: April 16, 2015
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • The INCITS L3 technical committee is the US Technical Advisory Group to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC29, which includes the JPEG and MPEG working groups. The technical committee is responsible for providing recommendations on US positions pertaining to the coding of audio, picture, multimedia, and hypermedia information. Anthony Vetro has been appointed as Chair of the L3 committee for a 3-year term from April 2015 to 2018.
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  •  AWARD    INCITS Gene Milligan Award for Effective Committee Management
    Date: April 14, 2015
    Awarded to: Anthony Vetro
    Awarded by: InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS)
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • The INCITS Gene Milligan Award for Effective Committee Management recognizes individuals who, as officers, have provided outstanding leadership to the subgroup in its national and/or international work, have demonstrated proficiency in achieving consensus in the national and/or international arenas and have followed the approved procedures in an exemplary fashion. Anthony Vetro was the recipient of this award in 2015. He has more than 15 years of participation in standards development, including service as the INCITS L3.1 Vice-Chair and Chair and an active technical participant in the MPEG committee.
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  •  NEWS    Robert Cohen appointed to the Industrial Relations Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society
    Date: April 1, 2015
    Brief
    • MERL researcher, Robert Cohen, was appointed to the Industrial Relations Committee for a 3-year term from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017. This committee is responsible for maintaining and improving relations between the IEEE Signal Processing Society and industry members.
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  •  NEWS    Papers presented at OFC 2015 optical communications conference
    Date: March 25, 2015
    MERL Contacts: Kieran Parsons; Toshiaki Koike-Akino
    Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Six papers from the Optical Comms team will be presented at the 2015 Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) being held in LA, USA in March 2015. The papers relate to high-dimensional modulation, signal processing, coding for coherent optical links and semiconductor laser linewidth measurement.
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  •  NEWS    Petros Boufounos appointed to the SigPort Board of the IEEE Signal Processing Society
    Date: March 1, 2015
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Brief
    • Signal Processing Repository (SigPort) is an online repository of manuscripts, reports, technical white papers, theses, and supporting materials. Created and supported by the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), SigPort collects technical material of interests to the broad signal processing community. It hosts material to help individuals obtain early and broad exposure on their work. MERL researcher, Petros Boufounos, was appointed to the SigPort Board for a 3-year term from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017.
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  •  NEWS    IEEE Spectrum's "Cars That Think" highlights MERL's speech enhancement research
    Date: March 9, 2015
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • Recent research on speech enhancement by MERL's Speech and Audio team was highlighted in "Cars That Think", IEEE Spectrum's blog on smart technologies for cars. IEEE Spectrum is the flagship publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest association of technical professionals with more than 400,000 members.
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  •  NEWS    MERL's noise suppression technology featured in Mitsubishi Electric Corporation press release
    Date: February 17, 2015
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced that it has developed breakthrough noise-suppression technology that significantly improves the quality of hands-free voice communication in noisy conditions, such as making a voice call via a car navigation system. Speech clarity is improved by removing 96% of surrounding sounds, including rapidly changing noise from turn signals or wipers, which are difficult to suppress using conventional methods. The technology is based on recent research on speech enhancement by MERL's Speech and Audio team. .
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  •  NEWS    3D reconstruction on Tokyo TV
    Date: February 20, 2015
    Research Area: Computer Vision
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  •  EVENT    Internships & Careers at MERL
    Date & Time: Friday, December 5, 2014; 12:00 noon - 2:00 pm
    Location: Tufts University, Halligan Hall, Room 102
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Brief
    • Come learn about MERL, our internships and our career options.

      Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) is home to some of the world's leading experts conducting fundamental and applied research in a variety of areas, such as Computer Vision, Audio & Video Processing, Digital Communications, Data Analytics, Mechatronics and Algorithms. Our overriding vision is to deliver innovation that has a lasting impact on the world--innovation that will be remembered 100 years from now.

      Each year, we hire 40-60 talented and motivated graduate students for summer internships. Come learn more about the work we do and meet with some of our researchers. The reception will include an a brief overview of our research and some demos. We will also have pizza and cupcakes!

      For those of you ready to graduate, we also have several research staff and post-doc openings. Hiring managers and researchers will be on hand to discuss these career opportunities at MERL.

      Session Agenda
      12:00 - 12:15 Welcome, sign-in
      12:15 - 12:30 Research overview
      12:30 - 1:30 Demos & discussion.
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  •  EVENT    Internships & Careers at MERL
    Date & Time: Monday, November 17, 2014; 1:00-2:30 pm
    Location: Northeastern University, Curry Student Center - Room 340
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) conducts fundamental and applied research in the areas of signal processing, optimization and control. Each year, we hire 40-60 talented and motivated graduate students for summer internships. Come learn more about the work we do and meet with our researchers. The reception will include an a brief overview of our research and some demos, as well as light snacks and refreshments.

      For those of you that are ready to graduate, we also have several research staff and post-doc openings. Hiring managers will be on hand to discuss these career opportunities at MERL.

      Session Agenda
      1:00 - 1:15 Welcome, sign-in
      1:15 - 1:30 Research overview
      1:30 - 2:30 Demos & discussion.
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  •  EVENT    SANE 2014 - Speech and Audio in the Northeast
    Date: Thursday, October 23, 2014
    Location: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • SANE 2014, 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 23, 2014 at MIT, in Cambridge, MA. It is a follow-up to SANE 2012, held at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL), and SANE 2013, held at Columbia University, which each gathered around 70 researchers and students. SANE 2014 will feature invited talks by leading researchers from the Northeast as well as Europe: Najim Dehak (MIT), Hakan Erdogan (MERL/Sabanci University), Gael Richard (Telecom ParisTech), George Saon (IBM Research), Andrew Senior (Google Research), Stavros Tsakalidis (BBN - Raytheon), and David Wingate (Lyric). It will also feature a lively poster session during lunch time, open to both students and researchers. SANE 2014 is organized by Jonathan Le Roux (MERL), Jim Glass (MIT), and John R. Hershey (MERL).
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  •  NEWS    MERL participates in IPXI 802.11n joint offering
    Date: October 1, 2014
    Where: Intellectual Property Exchange InternationaI (IPXI)
    Research Areas: Communications, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Intellectual Property Exchange International, Inc. (IPXI), the world's first financial exchange for licensing and trading intellectual property (IP) rights, today announced a multi-party offering for standard essential patents (SEPs) involving the world's most widely adopted standard protocol for wireless technology. The offering of Unit License Right™ (ULR™) contracts is based on patent rights from eight organizations—including MERL and other leading consumer electronics and telecommunications companies, universities and research laboratories—whose rights are considered essential to the IEEE 802.11n standard for higher throughput in wireless local area network (WLAN) communications.
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  •  NEWS    R&D 100 Award for MELFA-3D Vision system
    Date: July 11, 2014
    Where: R&D Magazine
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • A team with members from MERL, ATC, and Meiden received an R&D 100 award for its work on Mitsubishi Electric's MELFA-3D Vision system for industrial robot arms. This system completely automates bin picking a task for picking up parts that are randomly placed in a bin and aligning their poses for assembly processes.
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  •  NEWS    Member of the RF team now part of the Technical Program Committee for IEEE IWS 2015
    Date: July 1, 2014
    Where: IEEE International Wireless Symposium (IWS)
    Brief
    • Rui Ma has joined the Technical Program Committee for the 2015 IEEE International Wireless Symposium and will act as Sub-committee Chair for power amplifier design and organize a workshop on GaN.
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  •  NEWS    Member of the RF team accepted to Steering Committee of IEEE Microwave Theory & Techniques
    Date: June 12, 2014
    Where: IEEE Microwave Theory & Techniques Society
    Brief
    • Rui Ma has been accepted as a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE
      Microwave Theory & Techniques Society (Boston Section).
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  •  NEWS    Papers accepted to ECOC 2014 optical communications conference
    Date: June 10, 2014
    Where: European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC)
    MERL Contacts: Kieran Parsons; Toshiaki Koike-Akino
    Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Four papers from the Optical Communications team have been accepted for publication and presentation at the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) to be held in Cannes, France in September 2014. The papers relate to high-dimensional modulation, signal processing and coding for coherent optical links.
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  •  NEWS    Second Place in REVERB Challenge
    Date: May 10, 2014
    Where: REVERB Workshop
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric's submission to the REVERB workshop achieved the second best performance among all participating institutes. The team included Yuuki Tachioka and Tomohiro Narita of MELCO in Japan, and Shinji Watanabe and Felix Weninger of MERL. The challenge addresses automatic speech recognition systems that are robust against varying room acoustics.
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  •  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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