Newsletter
IMSC eNews, July 2003
Contact: Nichole Phillips, (213) 740-3237 nicholep@imsc.usc.edu.
SECOND IMSC RESEARCHER RECEIVES 2003 NSF CAREER AWARD - Dr. Cyrus Shahabi, IMSC's Research Area Director for Information Management, has become the second IMSC researcher to receive a prestigious 2003 Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Shahabi, an assistant professor of computer science, will use the five-year, $400,000 award for research, teaching and outreach activities involving the management of immersive sensor data streams. The other IMSC investigator to receive a 2003 NSF Career award was Dr. Shrikanth Narayanan, IMSC's Research Area Director for Application Research Projects. Dr. Shahabi is Director of the Information Laboratory at http://infolab.usc.edu, and Dr. Narayanan is Director of the Speech Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory at http://sail.usc.edu.
IMSC AT SIGGRAPH - Dr. Mathieu Desbrun, an IMSC key investigator and assistant professor of computer science who specializes in computer graphics, will receive the Significant New Researcher Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGGRAPH at the SIGGRAPH 2003 Conference, July 27-31, in San Diego, CA. Dr. Desbrun is Director of the Graphics Immersion Laboratory at http://www-grail.usc.edu. IMSC investigators and students will give four papers, present two sketches, and participate as lecturers in a course. The SIGGRAPH Conference and Exposition is a major international forum on computer graphics and interactive techniques. http://www.siggraph.org/s2003.
IMSC WELCOMES NVIS AS NEW INDUSTRY PROGRAM MEMBER - The Center welcomes NVIS of Reston, VA, as a new industry program member. NVIS designs and manufactures high-performance integrated micro-display systems for advanced visualization and virtual reality applications. Dr. Roger Zimmermann, IMSC's Research Area Director for IMSC's Media Immersion Environment, will work with NVIS on a Phase 1 Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program on the development of improved head-mounted displays for immersive virtual reality. For more information, visit http://dmrl.usc.edu/n02-t005.html or contact Dr. Zimmermann at rzimmerm@imsc.usc.edu.
INDUSTRY PROGRAM OFFERS RESEARCH SUPPORT OPTIONS - IMSC's Industry Program offers multiple options for access to research and collaboration. For companies looking for research support for their development efforts, the Center offers Member, Senior Member and Sponsor opportunities for participation. For more information, visit http://imsc.usc.edu/industry, or contact Ann Spurgeon at (213) 740-4877 or aspurgeo@imsc.usc.edu.
IMSC INVENTIONS INCREASE TO NEARLY 100 - IMSC's nearly 100 inventions have led to more than 50 patent filings, six patents issued, more than 90 commercial licenses and technology transfers, and nine small company spin-offs. Many cutting-edge technologies are still available for licensing. Visit http://imsc.usc.edu/industry/login.html for the Center's technology catalog. For more information, contact Dr. Isaac Maya at (213) 740-2592 or imaya@imsc.usc.edu.
GRANT AWARDS - In addition to receiving an NSF 2003 Career Award, Dr. Cyrus Shahabi also has received federal funding as a key researcher on two other federal grants awarded this year-"Data Fusion and Analysis for Multi-Sensor Earth System Science" for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (in collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and "Management and Processing of Continuous Streams from Moving Sensors" for NSF (as co-Principal Investigator, with Dr. Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, associate professor of computer science, as Principal Investigator).
Also, IMSC's Dr. Roger Zimmermann, research assistant professor of computer science, and Dr. Viktor Prasanna, professor of electrical engineering, received a $125,000 Hewlett-Packard Advanced Technology Platform-Itanium 2 Academic Grant. Dr. Zimmermann said that one purpose of the grant is to bring high performance computing to the classroom and that he plans to use an Itanium 2 server for a database systems course in the fall as well as for IMSC research projects. Prof. Prasanna will investigate active, explicit cache management on the new Itanium 2 architecture. The two will collaborate on a performance improvement evaluation.
The Integrated Media Systems Center is a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center at the University of Southern California.