DCU receives €23m Research Funding under PRTLI 4

The Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin, TD formally announced the outcome of PRTLI Cycle 4 at 11.00 am today. Under this scheme, DCU will receive €23m in research funding. This funding is based on 5 inter-institutional proposals:

- Nanoscience and Nanoscale technologies for Ireland (NANOTEIRE)
- National Biophotonics & Imaging Platform [NBIP]
- National Programme on (Bio)pharmaceutical & Pharmacological Sciences
- Humanities Serving Irish Society (HSIS)
- National Programme of Research on Knowledge, Innovation, Society and Space (KISS)

Significantly, the funding includes projects from across DCU, including science/engineering and humanities/social sciences.

Of particular interest to the Faculty of Engineering and Computing are the Nanoteire and NBIP programmes.

Nanoteire
Nanoteire (Nanoscience and Nano scale technologies for Ireland ) will create a shared national infrastructural capability by significantly upgrading and enhancing the laboratories and capital equipment holdings needed to establish top tier graduate education opportunities in nanoscience and nanoscale technologies for Ireland.

The DCU team, which comprises Professor Liam Barry, Dr. Pascal Landais and Professor Patrick McNally of the Research Institute for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE), and members of the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology (NCPST), will focus on the theme, Ultrafast Photonic Processes and Interactions. To this end DCU will add very significantly to its high speed optical communications laboratories, nanomaterials growth and characterization facilities and high power laser facilities.

NBIP
Professor Paul F. Whelan of the Centre for Image Processing & Analysis (CIPA-RINCE), in conjunction with the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute at DCU has been awarded funding as part of the National Biophotonics & Imaging Platform (NBIP). The mission of the NBIP is to provide an integrated national access and training infrastructure in research, education, technology development and industry collaboration for the State’s investment in Biophotonics and Imaging.

Congratulations to George Awad

Congratulations to George Awad who has successfully defended his thesis and will be awarded the degree of PhD.

The title of George's thesis is "A Framework for Sign Language Recognition using Support Vector Machines and Active Learning for Skin Segmentation and Boosted Temporal Sub-units".

He completed his PhD in the School of Computing, DCU under the supervision of Dr. Alistair Sutherland.

Brief Description of Research
This dissertation describes new techniques that can be used in a sign language recognition (SLR) system, and more generally in human gesture systems. Any SLR system consists of three main components: Skin detector, Tracker, and Recognizer. The skin detector is responsible for segmenting skin objects like the face and hands from video frames. The tracker keeps track of the hand location and detects any occlusions that might happen between any skin objects. Finally, the recognizer tries to classify the performed sign into one of the sign classes in our vocabulary using the set of features and information provided by the tracker.

In this work, we propose a new technique for skin segmentation using SVM (support vector machine) active learning combined with region segmentation information. Having segmented the face and hands, we need to track them across the frames. So, we have developed a unified framework for segmenting and tracking skin objects and detecting occlusions. Instead of dealing with the whole sign for recognition, the sign can be broken down into elementary subunits, which are far less in number than the total number of signs in the vocabulary. This motivated us to propose a novel algorithm to model and segment these subunits, then try to learn the informative combinations of subunits/features using a boosting framework. Our results reached above 90% recognition rate using very few training samples.

In summary, we propose a new paradigm to solve the SLR problem by discovering the subunits of the SL then learning the informative ones together with the informative features that can enhance the overall recognition accuracy. We believe that this approach is very promising to scale up the vocabulary of recognizing sign language without compromising the recognition accuracy.

This project was generously funded by the School of Computing, DCU and by Marie Curie Actions.

Computing PhD Student is finalist in Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship for Women in Computing

Congratulations to Sara Morrissey, a PhD student in the School of Computing, DCU, who recently became the only Irish finalist in the first Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship Scheme for Women in Computing.

Following an application process involving essays on her own research and women in computing as well as two phone interviews, Sara was selected from a pool of almost 200 applicants as one of 31 finalists and awarded €1,000 to supplement her research funds for the next academic year. As a finalist, she was also privileged to represent women in computing and technical fields in Ireland at a Finalists’ Retreat held in Google Europe HQ in Zurich where she participated in information and networking sessions.

The award itself commemorates the work of Dr. Anita Borg (1949 - 2003) whose vision for the advancement of technology and her founding of the Institute for Women and Technology led her to become an excellent role model for young women in the field of computing today. This award is open to women in computing across Europe who are dedicated to full-time work in the area of Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Informatics or a similarly related field through an MSc or PhD.

Researching the area of Sign Language Machine Translation, Sara is currently coming into the final year of her PhD in the School of Computing and hopes to continue working in this area as well as furthering her interest in the area of women in computing.

2007 China Ireland International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies 28th - 29th August 2007

DCU is proud to host the 2007 China Ireland International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies.

CIICT is an international conference focusing on topical research in the broad area of Information and Communications Technologies. The conference is jointly sponsored and organised by Chinese and Irish Universities with hosting alternating between China and Ireland. The first CIICT conference was hosted by Hangzhou Dianzi University in October 2006. The 2007 conference will be jointly sponsored and organised by Dublin City University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, in association with Hangzhou Dianzi University. The conference will be hosted in Dublin City University, Ireland.

The conference aims are to strengthen science and technology research collaboration between China and Ireland and also to provide a platform for facilitating academic and industrial research interactions with other countries.

CIICT is jointly organised by Research Institute for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE), Dublin City University, Ireland and State Key Lab of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China

Conference Dates: 28th-29th August 2007

International Symposium for Engineering Education, ISEE 2007 to be held at DCU

We are pleased to invite you to the "International Symposium for Engineering Education, ISEE 2007" which will be held from 17th - 19th September 2007 at DCU, Dublin, Ireland. This conference is fully sponsored by various national and international educational bodies.
Note the deadline for papers is the 10th August 2007.
Please visit the Call for Papers at http://www.ndlr.ie/mecheng/isee.

Deadlines:
Submission of paper: Friday 10th August 2007
Notification of acceptance: Friday 17th August 2007
Last registration date: Wednesday 12th September 2007
Conference start date: Monday 17th September 2007

20th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training 3-5 July, 2007

The 20th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training will be held in the School of Computing, Dublin City University, Ireland during the 3-5 July, 2007.

CSEE&T deals with the educational and training issues involved in ensuring that graduates and company staff are able to develop quality software in a cost-effective manner. Started in 1987 by Norm Gibbs at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), the Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEE&T) has become the premier annual conference focusing on education and training in software engineering. The conference has received the sustained support and sponsorship of IEEE - Computer Society, academia and industry. Responding to the global impact of software engineering practices, CSEE&T was held in Spain in 2003 and Canada in 2005.

Keynote speakers will discuss the software engineering scene and related educational and training developments in P.R. China (Prof. Yulin Wang), the nationally recognised graduate training programme at Fidelity Investments (Marie Moloney), and underlying dilemmas in software education (Prof. David Parnas). Globalisation is a particular focus this year, with twenty-six countries involved in the forty refereed papers being presented. Panel sessions, workshops and other events provide many further opportunities for the exchange of ideas.

Starting with CSEE&T 2006 in Hawaii, an Academy for Software Engineering Education and Training (ASEE&T) has been added to the program.

Details of the conference programme and other information can be found at:http://www.computing.dcu.ie/cseet2007

IRCSET Postdoctoral Fellowship Success

Congratulations to Zhen Liu, Timo Volkmer and Arijit Bhattacharya who were awarded Embark Postdoctoral Fellowships. We look forward to working with the new fellows over the coming years.

The Embark Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme is administered by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET). It is open to researchers from all nations who are at an early stage of their postdoctoral research career and who wish to further their research in the sciences, engineering or technology, at an Irish research institution.

Zhen Liu will be working with Dr. Xiaojun Wang (School of Electronic Engineering). Timo Volkmer will be working with Professor Alan Smeaton (School of Computing and CDVP/AIC). Arijit Bhattacharya will be working with Dr. John Geraghty and Dr. Paul Young (School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Other Embark successes for DCU are Clare Hamilton (Mol/Bio), Patrick Hayden (Physics), Ewa Kazimierska (Chemistry) and Jofre Pedregosa Gutierrez (Physics).

DCU was also successful in the the first round of the Embark Postgraduate Research Scholarship Scheme, the results of which were announced in March. The following successful applicants to this scheme will be hosted in the Faculty of Engineering and Computing, (supervisor and School in parentheses):
Oisín Mac Fhearaí (Dr. Mark Humphrys - School of Computing)
Didier Roche (Prof Heather Ruskin - School of Computing)
Robert Ryan (Dr Markus Helfert - School of Computing)
Georgiana Dinu (Prof Josef van Genabith - School of Computing)
Lorna Fitzsimons (Dr Brian Corcoran - School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering)
Stephen O'Brien (Prof Paul F Whelan - School of Electronic Engineering)

Of note:
The second call for the Embark Postgraduate Research Scholarship Scheme is expected at the end of June. If you are interested in applying for this scheme, please consult the research pages of the three Schools (below) and contact your potential supervisor directly.

School of Computing Research Pages
School of Electronic Engineering Research Pages
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Staff Pages