News & Events

65 News items, Awards, Events or Talks found.



Learn about the MERL Seminar Series.



  •  EVENT    MERL Contributes to ICASSP 2024
    Date: Sunday, April 14, 2024 - Friday, April 19, 2024
    Location: Seoul, South Korea
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; François Germain; Chiori Hori; Sameer Khurana; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Jonathan Le Roux; Hassan Mansour; Zexu Pan; Kieran Parsons; Joshua Rapp; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern; Ryoma Yataka
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2024, which is being held in Seoul, Korea from April 14-19, 2024.

      Sponsorship and Awards

      MERL is proud to be a Bronze Patron of the conference and will participate in the student job fair on Thursday, April 18. Please join this session to learn more about employment opportunities at MERL, including openings for research scientists, post-docs, and interns.

      MERL is pleased to be the sponsor of two IEEE Awards that will be presented at the conference. We congratulate Prof. Stéphane G. Mallat, the recipient of the 2024 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, and Prof. Keiichi Tokuda, the recipient of the 2024 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award.

      Jonathan Le Roux, MERL Speech and Audio Senior Team Leader, will also be recognized during the Awards Ceremony for his recent elevation to IEEE Fellow.

      Technical Program

      MERL will present 13 papers in the main conference on a wide range of topics including automated audio captioning, speech separation, audio generative models, speech and sound synthesis, spatial audio reproduction, multimodal indoor monitoring, radar imaging, depth estimation, physics-informed machine learning, and integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). Three workshop papers have also been accepted for presentation on audio-visual speaker diarization, music source separation, and music generative models.

      Perry Wang is the co-organizer of the Workshop on Signal Processing and Machine Learning Advances in Automotive Radars (SPLAR), held on Sunday, April 14. It features keynote talks from leaders in both academia and industry, peer-reviewed workshop papers, and lightning talks from ICASSP regular tracks on signal processing and machine learning for automotive radar and, more generally, radar perception.

      Gordon Wichern will present an invited keynote talk on analyzing and interpreting audio deep learning models at the Workshop on Explainable Machine Learning for Speech and Audio (XAI-SA), held on Monday, April 15. He will also appear in a panel discussion on interpretable audio AI at the workshop.

      Perry Wang also co-organizes a two-part special session on Next-Generation Wi-Fi Sensing (SS-L9 and SS-L13) which will be held on Thursday afternoon, April 18. The special session includes papers on PHY-layer oriented signal processing and data-driven deep learning advances, and supports upcoming 802.11bf WLAN Sensing Standardization activities.

      Petros Boufounos is participating as a mentor in ICASSP’s Micro-Mentoring Experience Program (MiME).

      About ICASSP

      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 3000 participants.
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  •  AWARD    MERL’s Paper on Wi-Fi Sensing Earns Top 3% Paper Recognition at ICASSP 2023, Selected as a Best Student Paper Award Finalist
    Date: June 9, 2023
    Awarded to: Cristian J. Vaca-Rubio, Pu Wang, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Ye Wang, Petros Boufounos and Petar Popovski
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Pu (Perry) Wang; Ye Wang
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • A MERL Paper on Wi-Fi sensing was recognized as a Top 3% Paper among all 2709 accepted papers at the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2023). Co-authored by Cristian Vaca-Rubio and Petar Popovski from Aalborg University, Denmark, and MERL researchers Pu Wang, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Ye Wang, and Petros Boufounos, the paper "MmWave Wi-Fi Trajectory Estimation with Continous-Time Neural Dynamic Learning" was also a Best Student Paper Award finalist.

      Performed during Cristian’s stay at MERL first as a visiting Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and then as a full-time intern in 2022, this work capitalizes on standards-compliant Wi-Fi signals to perform indoor localization and sensing. The paper uses a neural dynamic learning framework to address technical issues such as low sampling rate and irregular sampling intervals.

      ICASSP, a flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), was hosted on the Greek island of Rhodes from June 04 to June 10, 2023. ICASSP 2023 marked the largest ICASSP in history, boasting over 4000 participants and 6128 submitted papers, out of which 2709 were accepted.
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  •  EVENT    MERL Contributes to ICASSP 2023
    Date: Sunday, June 4, 2023 - Saturday, June 10, 2023
    Location: Rhodes Island, Greece
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; François Germain; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Jonathan Le Roux; Dehong Liu; Suhas Lohit; Yanting Ma; Hassan Mansour; Joshua Rapp; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2023, which is being held in Rhodes Island, Greece from June 4-10, 2023.

      Organization

      Petros Boufounos is serving as General Co-Chair of the conference this year, where he has been involved in all aspects of conference planning and execution.

      Perry Wang is the organizer of a special session on Radar-Assisted Perception (RAP), which will be held on Wednesday, June 7. The session will feature talks on signal processing and deep learning for radar perception, pose estimation, and mutual interference mitigation with speakers from both academia (Carnegie Mellon University, Virginia Tech, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and industry (Mitsubishi Electric, Bosch, Waveye).

      Anthony Vetro is the co-organizer of the Workshop on Signal Processing for Autonomous Systems (SPAS), which will be held on Monday, June 5, and feature invited talks from leaders in both academia and industry on timely topics related to autonomous systems.

      Sponsorship

      MERL is proud to be a Silver Patron of the conference and will participate in the student job fair on Thursday, June 8. Please join this session to learn more about employment opportunities at MERL, including openings for research scientists, post-docs, and interns.

      MERL is pleased to be the sponsor of two IEEE Awards that will be presented at the conference. We congratulate Prof. Rabab Ward, the recipient of the 2023 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, and Prof. Alexander Waibel, the recipient of the 2023 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award.

      Technical Program

      MERL is presenting 13 papers in the main conference on a wide range of topics including source separation and speech enhancement, radar imaging, depth estimation, motor fault detection, time series recovery, and point clouds. One workshop paper has also been accepted for presentation on self-supervised music source separation.

      Perry Wang has been invited to give a keynote talk on Wi-Fi sensing and related standards activities at the Workshop on Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC), which will be held on Sunday, June 4.

      Additionally, Anthony Vetro will present a Perspective Talk on Physics-Grounded Machine Learning, which is scheduled for Thursday, June 8.

      About ICASSP

      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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  •  AWARD    Petros Boufounos Elevated to IEEE Fellow
    Date: January 1, 2022
    Awarded to: Petros T. Boufounos
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL’s Petros Boufounos has been elevated to IEEE Fellow, effective January 2022, for “contributions to compressed sensing.”

      IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership of the IEEE. It honors members with an outstanding record of technical achievements, contributing importantly to the advancement or application of engineering, science and technology, and bringing significant value to society. Each year, following a rigorous evaluation procedure, the IEEE Fellow Committee recommends a select group of recipients for elevation to IEEE Fellow. Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation.
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  •  NEWS    Keynote Speech by Dr. Petros Boufounos
    Date: August 5, 2021
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL's Distinguished Researcher Dr. Petros Boufounos is the keynote speaker for the Center for Advanced Signal and Image Sciences (CASIS) 25th Annual Workshop on Aug. 5, 2021, with talk titled, "The Computational Sensing Revolution in Array Processing."
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  •  NEWS    MERL Congratulates Recipients of 2022 IEEE Technical Field Awards in Signal Processing
    Date: July 26, 2021
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Jonathan Le Roux; Philip V. Orlik; Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • IEEE has announced that the recipients of the 2022 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award will be Hervé Bourlard (EPFL/Idiap Research Institute) and Nelson Morgan (ICSI), "For contributions to neural networks for statistical speech recognition," and the recipient of the 2022 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing will be Ali Sayed (EPFL), "For contributions to the theory and practice of adaptive signal processing." More details about the contributions of Prof. Bourlard and Prof. Morgan can be found in the announcements by ICSI and EPFL, and those of Prof. Sayed in EPFL's announcement. Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) has recently become the new sponsor of these two prestigious awards, and extends our warmest congratulations to all of the 2022 award recipients.

      The IEEE Board of Directors established the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award in 2002 for outstanding contributions to the advancement of speech and/or audio signal processing, while the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing was established in 2012 for outstanding contribution to the advancement of signal processing, other than in the areas of speech and audio processing. Both awards have recognized the contributions of some of the most renowned pioneers and leaders in their respective fields. MERL is proud to support the recognition of outstanding contributions to the signal processing field through its sponsorship of these awards.
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  •  NEWS    MERL becomes new sponsor of two prestigious IEEE Technical Field Awards in Signal Processing
    Date: July 9, 2021
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Jonathan Le Roux; Philip V. Orlik; Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) has become the new sponsor of two prestigious IEEE Technical Field Awards in Signal Processing, the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award and the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, for the years 2022-2031. "MERL is proud to support the recognition of outstanding contributions to signal processing by sponsoring both the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award and the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing. These awards celebrate the creativity and innovation in the field that touch many aspects of our lives and drive our society forward" said Dr. Anthony Vetro, VP and Director at MERL.

      The IEEE Board of Directors established the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award in 2002 for outstanding contributions to the advancement of speech and/or audio signal processing, while the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing was established in 2012 for outstanding contribution to the advancement of signal processing, other than in the areas of speech and audio processing. Both awards have since recognized the contributions of some of the most renowned pioneers and leaders in their respective fields.

      By underwriting these IEEE Technical Field Awards, MERL continues to make a mark by supporting the advancement of technology that makes lasting changes in the world.
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  •  NEWS    MERL presenting 13 papers and an industry talk at ICASSP 2020
    Date: May 4, 2020 - May 8, 2020
    Where: Virtual Barcelona
    MERL Contacts: Karl Berntorp; Petros T. Boufounos; Chiori Hori; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Jonathan Le Roux; Dehong Liu; Yanting Ma; Hassan Mansour; 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 are presenting 13 papers at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing (ICASSP), which is being held virtually from May 4-8, 2020. Petros Boufounos is also presenting a talk on the Computational Sensing Revolution in Array Processing (video) in ICASSP’s Industry Track, and Siheng Chen is co-organizing and chairing a special session on a Signal-Processing View of Graph Neural Networks.

      Topics to be presented include recent advances in speech recognition, audio processing, scene understanding, computational sensing, array processing, and parameter estimation. Videos for all talks are available on MERL's YouTube channel, with corresponding links in the references below.

      This year again, MERL is a sponsor of the conference and will be participating in the Student Job Fair; please join us 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. Originally planned to be held in Barcelona, Spain, ICASSP has moved to a fully virtual setting due to the COVID-19 crisis, with free registration for participants not covering a paper.
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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    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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  •  EVENT    Dr. Petros Boufounos is co-organizing workshop on the Intersection of Information Theory and Signal Processing
    Date: Sunday, October 28, 2018 - Friday, November 2, 2018
    Location: Banff International Research Station (BIRS), Alberta, Canada
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Dr. Petros Boufounos, Prof. Stark Draper (U. of Toronto) and Prof. Yonina Eldar (Technion) are co-organizing a workshop on the intersection of Information Theory and Signal Processing. The 5-day workshop will take place Oct. 28 - Nov. 2 at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) in Alberta, Canada. The workshop schedule includes invited talks from prominent researchers in the two fields, coming together from all over the world. Parts of the workshop will be streamed live through the BIRS website.
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  •  NEWS    MERL presenting 9 papers at ICASSP 2018
    Date: April 15, 2018 - April 20, 2018
    Where: Calgary, AB
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Jonathan Le Roux; Dehong Liu; Hassan Mansour; Philip V. Orlik; Pu (Perry) Wang
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Digital Video, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • MERL researchers are presenting 9 papers at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing (ICASSP), which is being held in Calgary from April 15-20, 2018. Topics to be presented include recent advances in speech recognition, audio processing, and computational sensing. MERL is also a sponsor of the conference.

      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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  •  EVENT    MERL's Petros Boufounos is co-organizing symposium on The Future Of Signal Processing
    Date & Time: Monday, October 23, 2017; 8:00am-4:00pm
    Location: MIT Samberg Conference Center Floor 7, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Communications, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Dr. Petros Boufounos is co-organizing the symposium on "The Future of Signal Processing," held in honor of the 80th birthday of Prof. Alan V. Oppenheim.

      Details at: https://futureofsp.eecs.mit.edu

      Organizing committee:
      Dr. Tom Baran, Lumii
      Dr. Petros Boufounos, MERL
      Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT
      Prof. Yonina Eldar, Technion

      Program:
      8:00-8:45 Coffee
      8:45-9:00 Opening remarks
      Prof. Martin Schmidt, Provost, MIT
      9:00-9:35 The ever-expanding physical boundaries of Signal Processing
      Prof. Martin Vetterli, President of EPFL, Lausanne
      9:35-10:10 Signal Processors and the U.S. Navy: Enduring Partners
      Admiral John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations, US Navy

      10:10-10:30 Short break

      10:30-11:05 Signals and Signal Processing: The Invisibles and The Everlastings
      Prof. Min Wu, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland
      11:05-11:40 Signal processing with quantum computers
      Prof. Isaac Chuang, Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering; Senior Associate Dean of Digital Learning, MIT

      11:40-12:30 A box lunch will be provided. In your lunchbox, you'll find an envelope with four cards in it. Bring these cards back to your seats promptly after lunch for a magical surprise!

      12:30-12:40 Your Role in the Future of Signal Processing
      Magician Joel Acevedo

      12:40-1:05 Future of Low-power Embedded Signal Processing
      Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan, Dean, School of Engineering, MIT
      1:05-1:30 Synthetic biology and signal processing in living cells
      Prof. Ron Weiss, MIT, Professor of Biological Engineering and Director of the Synthetic Biology Center
      1:30-1:55 Physics 101 for Data Scientists
      Prof. Richard Baraniuk, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, Founder and Director of OpenStax College

      1:55-2:15 Short break

      2:15-2:40 Signals: Representation and Information
      Prof. Meir Feder, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University

      2:40-3:05 Exposing and Removing Information: Some new Mathematics for Signal Processing
      Dr. Petros Boufounos, Senior Principal Research Scientist, Sensing Team Leader, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs

      3:05-4:00 Panel discussion: The Venn diagram between "Data Science," "Machine Learning" and "Signal Processing"
      Moderator:
      Prof. Alan Oppenheim, Ford Professor of Engineering, MIT
      Panelists:
      Prof. Asu Ozdaglar, Associate Department Head, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
      Prof. Ron Schafer, Georgia Tech (Emeritus) and Stanford Univ.
      Prof. Yonina Eldar, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Technion
      Prof. Victor Zue, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, MIT
      Prof. Alexander Rakhlin, Associate Professor of Statistics, University of Pennsylvania
      4:00 Closing remarks.
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  •  NEWS    MERL presents 5 papers at ICIP 2017, Anthony Vetro serves as general co-chair
    Date: September 17, 2017 - September 20, 2017
    Where: Beijing, China
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Dehong Liu; Hassan Mansour; Huifang Sun; Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Computer Vision, Computational Sensing, Digital Video
    Brief
    • MERL presented 5 papers at the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), which was held in Beijing, China from September 17-20, 2017. ICIP is a flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society and approximately 1300 people attended the event. Anthony Vetro served as General Co-chair for the conference.
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  •  NEWS    MERL to present 10 papers at ICASSP 2017
    Date: March 5, 2017 - March 9, 2017
    Where: New Orleans
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Jonathan Le Roux; Dehong Liu; Hassan Mansour; Anthony Vetro; Ye Wang
    Research Areas: Computer Vision, Computational Sensing, Digital Video, Information Security, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • MERL researchers will presented 10 papers at the upcoming IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing (ICASSP), to be held in New Orleans from March 5-9, 2017. Topics to be presented include recent advances in speech recognition and audio processing; graph signal processing; computational imaging; and privacy-preserving data analysis.

      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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  •  TALK    High-Dimensional Analysis of Stochastic Optimization Algorithms for Estimation and Learning
    Date & Time: Tuesday, December 13, 2016; Noon
    Speaker: Yue M. Lu, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
    MERL Host: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Machine Learning
    Abstract
    • In this talk, we will present a framework for analyzing, in the high-dimensional limit, the exact dynamics of several stochastic optimization algorithms that arise in signal and information processing. For concreteness, we consider two prototypical problems: sparse principal component analysis and regularized linear regression (e.g. LASSO). For each case, we show that the time-varying estimates given by the algorithms will converge weakly to a deterministic "limiting process" in the high-dimensional limit. Moreover, this limiting process can be characterized as the unique solution of a nonlinear PDE, and it provides exact information regarding the asymptotic performance of the algorithms. For example, performance metrics such as the MSE, the cosine similarity and the misclassification rate in sparse support recovery can all be obtained by examining the deterministic limiting process. A steady-state analysis of the nonlinear PDE also reveals interesting phase transition phenomena related to the performance of the algorithms. Although our analysis is asymptotic in nature, numerical simulations show that the theoretical predictions are accurate for moderate signal dimensions.
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  •  TALK    Collaborative dictionary learning from big, distributed data
    Date & Time: Friday, December 2, 2016; 11:00 AM
    Speaker: Prof. Waheed Bajwa, Rutgers University
    MERL Host: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Area: Computational Sensing
    Abstract
    • While distributed information processing has a rich history, relatively less attention has been paid to the problem of collaborative learning of nonlinear geometric structures underlying data distributed across sites that are connected to each other in an arbitrary topology. In this talk, we discuss this problem in the context of collaborative dictionary learning from big, distributed data. It is assumed that a number of geographically-distributed, interconnected sites have massive local data and they are interested in collaboratively learning a low-dimensional geometric structure underlying these data. In contrast to some of the previous works on subspace-based data representations, we focus on the geometric structure of a union of subspaces (UoS). In this regard, we propose a distributed algorithm, termed cloud K-SVD, for collaborative learning of a UoS structure underlying distributed data of interest. The goal of cloud K-SVD is to learn an overcomplete dictionary at each individual site such that every sample in the distributed data can be represented through a small number of atoms of the learned dictionary. Cloud K-SVD accomplishes this goal without requiring communication of individual data samples between different sites. In this talk, we also theoretically characterize deviations of the dictionaries learned at individual sites by cloud K-SVD from a centralized solution. Finally, we numerically illustrate the efficacy of cloud K-SVD in the context of supervised training of nonlinear classsifiers from distributed, labaled training data.
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  •  NEWS    MERL makes a strong showing at the American Control Conference
    Date: July 6, 2016 - July 8, 2016
    Where: American Control Conference (ACC)
    MERL Contacts: Mouhacine Benosman; Karl Berntorp; Scott A. Bortoff; Petros T. Boufounos; Stefano Di Cairano; Abraham Goldsmith; Christopher R. Laughman; Daniel N. Nikovski; Arvind Raghunathan; Yebin Wang; Avishai Weiss
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning
    Brief
    • The premier American Control Conference (ACC) takes place in Boston July 6-8. This year MERL researchers will present a record 20 papers(!) at ACC, with several contributions, especially in autonomous vehicle path planning and in Model Predictive Control (MPC) theory and applications, including manufacturing machines, electric motors, satellite station keeping, and HVAC. Other important themes developed in MERL's presentations concern adaptation, learning, and optimization in control systems.
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  •  NEWS    MERL researchers present 12 papers at ICASSP 2016
    Date: March 20, 2016 - March 25, 2016
    Where: Shanghai, China
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Chiori Hori; Jonathan Le Roux; Dehong Liu; Hassan Mansour; Philip V. Orlik; Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Digital Video, Speech & Audio, Communications, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL researchers have presented 12 papers at the recent IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing (ICASSP), which was held in Shanghai, China from March 20-25, 2016. 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, with more than 1200 papers presented and over 2000 participants.
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  •  AWARD    2015 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award
    Date: December 1, 2015
    Awarded to: Mark A. Davenport, Petros T. Boufounos, Michael B. Wakin and Richard G. Baraniuk
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Area: Computational Sensing
    Brief
    • Petros Boufounos is a recipient of the 2015 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award for the paper that he co-authored with Mark A. Davenport, Michael B. Wakin and Richard G. Baraniuk on "Signal Processing with Compressive Measurements" which was published in the April 2010 issue of IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing. The Best Paper Award honors the author(s) of a paper of exceptional merit dealing with a subject related to the Society's technical scope, and appearing in one of the Society's solely owned transactions or the Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing. Eligibility is based on a five-year window: for example, for the 2015 Award, the paper must have appeared in one of the Society's Transactions between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2014.
      .
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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    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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  •  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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  •  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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