News & Events

55 News items, Awards, Events or Talks found.



Learn about the MERL Seminar Series.



  •  EVENT    MERL Contributes to ICASSP 2023
    Date: Sunday, June 4, 2023 - Saturday, June 10, 2023
    Location: Rhodes Island, Greece
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Francois 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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  •  TALK    [MERL Seminar Series 2023] Prof. Mark Ku presents talk titled A beginner’s guide to quantum sensing illustrated with nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond
    Date & Time: Wednesday, May 17, 2023; 1:00 PM
    Speaker: Mark Ku, The University of Delaware
    MERL Host: Chungwei Lin
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Computational Sensing
    Abstract
    • Quantum technology holds potential for revolutionizing how information is processed, transmitted, and acquired. While quantum computation and quantum communication have been among the well-known examples of quantum technology, it is increasingly recognized that quantum sensing is the application with the most potential for immediate wide-spread practical utilization. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the field of quantum sensing with nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond as a specific example. I will introduce the physical system of NV and describe some basic quantum sensing protocols. Then, I will present some state-of-the-art and examples where quantum sensors such as NV can accomplish what traditional sensors cannot. Lastly, I will discuss potential future directions in the area of NV quantum sensing.
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  •  TALK    [MERL Seminar Series 2023] Prof. Shaowu Pan presents talk titled Neural Implicit Flow
    Date & Time: Wednesday, March 1, 2023; 1:00 PM
    Speaker: Shaowu Pan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
    MERL Host: Saviz Mowlavi
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Data Analytics, Machine Learning
    Abstract
    • High-dimensional spatio-temporal dynamics can often be encoded in a low-dimensional subspace. Engineering applications for modeling, characterization, design, and control of such large-scale systems often rely on dimensionality reduction to make solutions computationally tractable in real-time. Common existing paradigms for dimensionality reduction include linear methods, such as the singular value decomposition (SVD), and nonlinear methods, such as variants of convolutional autoencoders (CAE). However, these encoding techniques lack the ability to efficiently represent the complexity associated with spatio-temporal data, which often requires variable geometry, non-uniform grid resolution, adaptive meshing, and/or parametric dependencies. To resolve these practical engineering challenges, we propose a general framework called Neural Implicit Flow (NIF) that enables a mesh-agnostic, low-rank representation of large-scale, parametric, spatial-temporal data. NIF consists of two modified multilayer perceptrons (MLPs): (i) ShapeNet, which isolates and represents the spatial complexity, and (ii) ParameterNet, which accounts for any other input complexity, including parametric dependencies, time, and sensor measurements. We demonstrate the utility of NIF for parametric surrogate modeling, enabling the interpretable representation and compression of complex spatio-temporal dynamics, efficient many-spatial-query tasks, and improved generalization performance for sparse reconstruction.
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  •  NEWS    MERL Researchers gave a Tutorial Talk on Quantum Machine Learning for Sensing and Communications at IEEE GLOBECOM
    Date: December 8, 2022
    MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Pu (Perry) Wang
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • On December 8, 2022, MERL researchers Toshiaki Koike-Akino and Pu (Perry) Wang gave a 3.5-hour tutorial presentation at the IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM). The talk, titled "Post-Deep Learning Era: Emerging Quantum Machine Learning for Sensing and Communications," addressed recent trends, challenges, and advances in sensing and communications. P. Wang presented on use cases, industry trends, signal processing, and deep learning for Wi-Fi integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), while T. Koike-Akino discussed the future of deep learning, giving a comprehensive overview of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, natural computing, emerging quantum AI, and their diverse applications. The tutorial was conducted remotely. MERL's quantum AI technology was partly reported in the recent press release (https://us.mitsubishielectric.com/en/news/releases/global/2022/1202-a/index.html).

      The IEEE GLOBECOM is a highly anticipated event for researchers and industry professionals in the field of communications. Organized by the IEEE Communications Society, the flagship conference is known for its focus on driving innovation in all aspects of the field. Each year, over 3,000 scientific researchers submit proposals for program sessions at the annual conference. The theme of this year's conference was "Accelerating the Digital Transformation through Smart Communications," and featured a comprehensive technical program with 13 symposia, various tutorials and workshops.
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  •  NEWS    MERL's Quantum Machine Learning Technology Featured in Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Press Release
    Date: December 2, 2022
    MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Kieran Parsons; Pu (Perry) Wang; Ye Wang
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Signal Processing, Human-Computer Interaction
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced its development of a quantum artificial intelligence (AI) technology that automatically optimizes inference models to downsize the scale of computation with quantum neural networks. The new quantum AI technology can be integrated with classical machine learning frameworks for diverse solutions.

      Mitsubishi Electric has confirmed that the technology can be incorporated in the world's first applications for terahertz (THz) imaging, Wi-Fi indoor monitoring, compressed sensing, and brain-computer interfaces. The technology is based on recent research by MERL's Connectivity & Information Processing team and Computational Sensing team.

      Mitsubishi Electric's new quantum machine learning (QML) technology realizes compact inference models by fully exploiting the enormous capacity of quantum computers to express exponentially larger-state space with the number of quantum bits (qubits). In a hybrid combination of both quantum and classical AI, the technology can compensate for limitations of classical AI to achieve superior performance while significantly downsizing the scale of AI models, even when using limited data.
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  •  EVENT    MERL's Virtual Open House 2022
    Date & Time: Monday, December 12, 2022; 1:00pm-5:30pm ET
    Location: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)/Virtual
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio, Digital Video
    Brief
    • Join MERL's virtual open house on December 12th, 2022! Featuring a keynote, live sessions, research area booths, and opportunities to interact with our research team. Discover who we are and what we do, and learn about internship and employment opportunities.
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  •  NEWS    MERL Researcher Kyeong Jin Kim organizes the second international workshop in 2023 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC).
    Date: May 28, 2023 - June 1, 2023
    Where: Rome, Italy
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Kyeong Jin Kim, a Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Connectivity & Information Processing Team, organizes the second international workshop in 2023 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC). The workshop is titled, "Industrial Private 5G-and-beyond Wireless Networks," and aims to bring researchers for technical discussion on fundamental and practically relevant questions to many emerging challenges in industrial private wireless networks. This workshop is also being organized with the help of other researchers from industry and academia such as Huawei Technology, University of South Florida, Aalborg University, Jinan University, and South China University of Technology. IEEE ICC is one of two IEEE Communications Society's flagship conferences.
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  •  NEWS    MERL launches Postdoctoral Research Fellow program
    Date: September 21, 2022
    MERL Contacts: Philip V. Orlik; Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) invites qualified postdoctoral candidates to apply for the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow. This position provides early career scientists the opportunity to work at a unique, academically-oriented industrial research laboratory. Successful candidates will be expected to define and pursue their own original research agenda, explore connections to established laboratory initiatives, and publish high impact articles in leading venues. Please refer to our web page for further details.
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  •  NEWS    MERL Scientists Presenting 5 Papers at IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2022
    Date: May 16, 2022 - May 20, 2022
    Where: Seoul, Korea
    MERL Contacts: Jianlin Guo; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Philip V. Orlik; Kieran Parsons; Pu (Perry) Wang; Ye Wang
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL Connectivity & Information Processing Team scientists remotely presented 5 papers at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2022, held in Seoul Korea on May 16-20, 2022. Topics presented include recent advancements in communications technologies, deep learning methods, and quantum machine learning (QML). Presentation videos are also found on our YouTube channel. In addition, K. J. Kim organized "Industrial Private 5G-and-beyond Wireless Networks Workshop" at the conference.

      IEEE ICC is one of two IEEE Communications Society’s flagship conferences (ICC and Globecom). Each year, close to 2,000 attendees from over 70 countries attend IEEE ICC to take advantage of a program which consists of exciting keynote session, robust technical paper sessions, innovative tutorials and workshops, and engaging industry sessions. This 5-day event is known for bringing together audiences from both industry and academia to learn about the latest research and innovations in communications and networking technology, share ideas and best practices, and collaborate on future projects.
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  •  TALK    [MERL Seminar Series 2022] Beyond the First Portrait of a Black Hole
    Date & Time: Tuesday, February 15, 2022; 1:00 PM EST
    Speaker: Katie Bouman, California Institute of Technology
    MERL Host: Joshua Rapp
    Research Area: Computational Sensing
    Abstract
    • As imaging requirements become more demanding, we must rely on increasingly sparse and/or noisy measurements that fail to paint a complete picture. Computational imaging pipelines, which replace optics with computation, have enabled image formation in situations that are impossible for conventional optical imaging. For instance, the first black hole image, published in 2019, was only made possible through the development of computational imaging pipelines that worked alongside an Earth-sized distributed telescope. However, remaining scientific questions motivate us to improve this computational telescope to see black hole phenomena still invisible to us and to meaningfully interpret the collected data. This talk will discuss how we are leveraging and building upon recent advances in machine learning in order to achieve more efficient uncertainty quantification of reconstructed images as well as to develop techniques that allow us to extract the evolving structure of our own Milky Way's black hole over the course of a night, perhaps even in three dimensions.
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  •  AWARD    Joshua Rapp wins Best Dissertation Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society
    Date: December 20, 2021
    Awarded to: Joshua Rapp
    MERL Contact: Joshua Rapp
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • Joshua Rapp has won the 2021 Best PhD Dissertation Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society.
      The award recognizes a PhD thesis completed on a signal processing subject within the past three years for its relevant work in signal processing while stimulating further research in the field.

      Dr. Rapp completed his PhD at Boston University in 2020 with a thesis entitled "Probabilistic Modeling for Single-Photon Lidar." The dissertation tackles challenges of the acquisition and processing of 3D depth maps reconstructed from time-of-flight data captured one photon at a time.
      The award will be presented at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) in France.
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  •  EVENT    Prof. Melanie Zeilinger of ETH to give keynote at MERL's Virtual Open House
    Date & Time: Thursday, December 9, 2021; 1:00pm - 5:30pm EST
    Location: Virtual Event
    Speaker: Prof. Melanie Zeilinger, ETH
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio, Digital Video, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Security
    Brief
    • MERL is excited to announce the second keynote speaker for our Virtual Open House 2021:
      Prof. Melanie Zeilinger from ETH .

      Our virtual open house will take place on December 9, 2021, 1:00pm - 5:30pm (EST).

      Join us to learn more about who we are, what we do, and discuss our internship and employment opportunities. Prof. Zeilinger's talk is scheduled for 3:15pm - 3:45pm (EST).

      Registration: https://mailchi.mp/merl/merlvoh2021

      Keynote Title: Control Meets Learning - On Performance, Safety and User Interaction

      Abstract: With increasing sensing and communication capabilities, physical systems today are becoming one of the largest generators of data, making learning a central component of autonomous control systems. While this paradigm shift offers tremendous opportunities to address new levels of system complexity, variability and user interaction, it also raises fundamental questions of learning in a closed-loop dynamical control system. In this talk, I will present some of our recent results showing how even safety-critical systems can leverage the potential of data. I will first briefly present concepts for using learning for automatic controller design and for a new safety framework that can equip any learning-based controller with safety guarantees. The second part will then discuss how expert and user information can be utilized to optimize system performance, where I will particularly highlight an approach developed together with MERL for personalizing the motion planning in autonomous driving to the individual driving style of a passenger.
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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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  •  EVENT    Prof. Ashok Veeraraghavan of Rice University to give keynote at MERL's Virtual Open House
    Date & Time: Thursday, December 9, 2021; 1:00pm - 5:30pm EST
    Location: Virtual Event
    Speaker: Prof. Ashok Veeraraghavan, Rice University
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio, Digital Video, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Security
    Brief
    • MERL is excited to announce the first keynote speaker for our Virtual Open House 2021:
      Prof. Ashok Veeraraghavan from Rice University.

      Our virtual open house will take place on December 9, 2021, 1:00pm - 5:30pm (EST).

      Join us to learn more about who we are, what we do, and discuss our internship and employment opportunities. Prof. Veeraraghavan's talk is scheduled for 1:15pm - 1:45pm (EST).

      Registration: https://mailchi.mp/merl/merlvoh2021

      Keynote Title: Computational Imaging: Beyond the limits imposed by lenses.

      Abstract: The lens has long been a central element of cameras, since its early use in the mid-nineteenth century by Niepce, Talbot, and Daguerre. The role of the lens, from the Daguerrotype to modern digital cameras, is to refract light to achieve a one-to-one mapping between a point in the scene and a point on the sensor. This effect enables the sensor to compute a particular two-dimensional (2D) integral of the incident 4D light-field. We propose a radical departure from this practice and the many limitations it imposes. In the talk we focus on two inter-related research projects that attempt to go beyond lens-based imaging.

      First, we discuss our lab’s recent efforts to build flat, extremely thin imaging devices by replacing the lens in a conventional camera with an amplitude mask and computational reconstruction algorithms. These lensless cameras, called FlatCams can be less than a millimeter in thickness and enable applications where size, weight, thickness or cost are the driving factors. Second, we discuss high-resolution, long-distance imaging using Fourier Ptychography, where the need for a large aperture aberration corrected lens is replaced by a camera array and associated phase retrieval algorithms resulting again in order of magnitude reductions in size, weight and cost. Finally, I will spend a few minutes discussing how the wholistic computational imaging approach can be used to create ultra-high-resolution wavefront sensors.
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  •  EVENT    MERL Virtual Open House 2021
    Date & Time: Thursday, December 9, 2021; 100pm-5:30pm (EST)
    Location: Virtual Event
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio, Digital Video, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Security
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories cordially invites you to join our Virtual Open House, on December 9, 2021, 1:00pm - 5:30pm (EST).

      The event will feature keynotes, live sessions, research area booths, and time for open interactions with our researchers. Join us to learn more about who we are, what we do, and discuss our internship and employment opportunities.

      Registration: https://mailchi.mp/merl/merlvoh2021
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  •  TALK    [MERL Seminar Series 2021] Prof. Greg Ongie presents talk at MERL entitled Learning to Solve Inverse Problems in Computational Imaging: Recent Innovations
    Date & Time: Tuesday, October 12, 2021; 1:00 PM EST
    Speaker: Prof. Greg Ongie, Marquette University
    MERL Host: Hassan Mansour
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Abstract
    • Deep learning is emerging as powerful tool to solve challenging inverse problems in computational imaging, including basic image restoration tasks like denoising and deblurring, as well as image reconstruction problems in medical imaging. This talk will give an overview of the state-of-the-art supervised learning techniques in this area and discuss two recent innovations: deep equilibrium architectures, which allows one to train an effectively infinite-depth reconstruction network; and model adaptation methods, that allow one to adapt a pre-trained reconstruction network to changes in the imaging forward model at test time.
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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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  •  AWARD    Best Paper - Honorable Mention Award at WACV 2021
    Date: January 6, 2021
    Awarded to: Rushil Anirudh, Suhas Lohit, Pavan Turaga
    MERL Contact: Suhas Lohit
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning
    Brief
    • A team of researchers from Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Arizona State University (ASU) received the Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at WACV 2021 for their paper "Generative Patch Priors for Practical Compressive Image Recovery".

      The paper proposes a novel model of natural images as a composition of small patches which are obtained from a deep generative network. This is unlike prior approaches where the networks attempt to model image-level distributions and are unable to generalize outside training distributions. The key idea in this paper is that learning patch-level statistics is far easier. As the authors demonstrate, this model can then be used to efficiently solve challenging inverse problems in imaging such as compressive image recovery and inpainting even from very few measurements for diverse natural scenes.
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  •  NEWS    MERL published four papers in 2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference
    Date: December 7, 2020 - December 11, 2020
    Where: Taipei, Taiwan
    MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Philip V. Orlik; Pu (Perry) Wang; Ye Wang
    Research Areas: Communications, Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL researchers have published four papers in 2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GlobeComm). This conference is one of the two IEEE Communications Societies flagship conferences dedicated to Communications for Human and Machine Intelligence. Topics of the published papers include, transmit diversity schemes, coding for molecular networks, and location and human activity sensing via WiFi signals.
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  •  EVENT    MERL Virtual Open House 2020
    Date & Time: Wednesday, December 9, 2020; 1:00-5:00PM EST
    Location: Virtual
    MERL Contacts: Elizabeth Phillips; Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
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  •  NEWS    MERL Researcher Pu (Perry) Wang organized a special session on automotive radar sensing at IEEE SAM Workshop 2020
    Date: June 8, 2020 - June 12, 2020
    Where: Virtual Hangzhou
    MERL Contact: Pu (Perry) Wang
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Sensing, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL researcher Pu (Perry) Wang organized a special session on June 10, 2020 titled Automotive Radar Sensing. Presentations included topics from deep waveform design, object tracking, mutual interference mitigation with their applications to high-resolution automotive imaging. The session's contributors come from both academia and industry.

      In this special session, our previous intern Yuxuan Xia (Chalmers Institute of Technology, Sweden) presented our work on extended object tracking using low-cost automotive radar sensors with a realistic measurement model. Yuxuan was also selected to be one of the six best student paper finalists at IEEE SAM 2020.
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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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