- Date & Time: Tuesday, March 28, 2017; 1:30 - 5:30PM
Location: Google (355 Main St., 5th Floor, Cambridge MA)
MERL Contacts: Daniel N. Nikovski; Anthony Vetro; Richard C. (Dick) Waters; Jinyun Zhang Brief - How will AI and robotics reshape the economy and create new opportunities (and challenges) across industries? Who are the hottest companies that will compete with the likes of Google, Amazon, and Uber to create the future? And what are New England innovators doing to strengthen the local cluster and help lead the national discussion?
MERL will be participating in Xconomy's third annual conference on AI and robotics in Boston to address these questions. MERL President & CEO, Dick Waters, will be on a panel discussing the status and future of self-driving vehicles. Lab members will also be on hand demonstrate and discuss recent advances AI and robotics technology.
The agenda and registration for the event can be found online: https://xconomyforum85.eventbrite.com.
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- Date: March 19, 2017 - March 23, 2017
Where: Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC)
MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Kieran Parsons
Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Signal Processing
Brief - Five papers from the Optical Comms team will be presented at OFC2017 to be held in Los Angeles from 19-23 March 2017. The papers relate to 1Tb/s optical transmission, high performance modulation formats and error correction coding for coherent optical links and precoding for plastic optical fiber links.
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- Date & Time: Tuesday, January 17, 2017; 6:00 pm
Location: 201 Broadway, Cambridge, MA
Speaker: Tim Marks, Esra Cansizoglu and Carl Vondrick, MERL and MIT
Research Area: Computer Vision
Brief - MERL was pleased to host the Boston Imaging and Vision Meetup held on January 17. The meetup is an informal gathering of people interested in the field of computer imaging and vision. According to the group's website "the meetup provides an opportunity for the image processing/computer vision community to network, socialize and learn". The event held at MERL featured three speakers, Tim Marks and Esra Cansizoglu from MERL, as well as Carl Vondrick, an MIT CS graduate student in the group of Prof. Antonio Torralba. Roughly 70 people attended to eat pizza, hear the speakers and network.
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- Date & Time: Wednesday, February 1, 2017; 12:00-13:00
Speaker: Dr. Heiga ZEN, Google
MERL Host: Chiori Hori
Research Area: Speech & Audio
Abstract 
Recent progress in generative modeling has improved the naturalness of synthesized speech significantly. In this talk I will summarize these generative model-based approaches for speech synthesis such as WaveNet, a deep generative model of raw audio waveforms. We show that WaveNets are able to generate speech which mimics any human voice and which sounds more natural than the best existing Text-to-Speech systems.
See https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw-audio/ for further details.
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- 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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- Date: January 12, 2017
Where: Tokyo, Japan
Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices
Brief - Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) announced today the development of an ultra-wideband gallium nitride (GaN) Doherty power amplifier for next generation base stations that is compatible with a world-leading range (company estimate) of frequency bands above 3GHz to cover an operating bandwidth of 600MHz. The technology is expected to help reduce the size and energy consumption of next generation wireless base stations.
Please see the link below for the full Mitsubishi Electric press release text.
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- Date: October 15, 2016
Awarded to: Anthony Vetro
MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro Brief - Anthony Vetro was recognized by APSIPA (Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association) as a 2016 Industrial Distinguished Leader. This distinction is reserved for selected APSIPA members with extraordinary accomplishments in any of the fields related to APSIPA scope. A list of past recipients can be found online: http://www.apsipa.org/industrial.htm.
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- 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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- Date & Time: Monday, December 12, 2016; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Yanlai Chen, Department of Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
Abstract - Models of reduced computational complexity is indispensable in scenarios where a large number of numerical solutions to a parametrized problem are desired in a fast/real-time fashion. These include simulation-based design, parameter optimization, optimal control, multi-model/scale analysis, uncertainty quantification. Thanks to an offline-online procedure and the recognition that the parameter-induced solution manifolds can be well approximated by finite-dimensional spaces, reduced basis method (RBM) and reduced collocation method (RCM) can improve efficiency by several orders of magnitudes. The accuracy of the RBM solution is maintained through a rigorous a posteriori error estimator whose efficient development is critical and involves fast eigensolves.
In this talk, I will give a brief introduction of the RBM/RCM, and explain how they can be used for data compression, face recognition, and significantly delaying the curse of dimensionality for uncertainty quantification.
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- 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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- Date: Saturday, December 10, 2016
Location: Centre Convencions Internacional Barcelona, Barcelona SPAIN
Research Areas: Machine Learning, Speech & Audio
Brief - MERL researcher John Hershey, is organizing a Workshop on End-to-End Speech and Audio Processing, on behalf of MERL's Speech and Audio team, and in collaboration with Philemon Brakel of the University of Montreal. The workshop focuses on recent advances to end-to-end deep learning methods to address alignment and structured prediction problems that naturally arise in speech and audio processing. The all day workshop takes place on Saturday, December 10th at NIPS 2016, in Barcelona, Spain.
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- Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Location: 2016 IEEE Spoken Language Technology Workshop, San Diego, California
Speaker: John Hershey, MERL
MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
Research Areas: Machine Learning, Speech & Audio
Brief - MERL researcher John Hershey presents an invited tutorial at the 2016 IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology, in San Diego, California. The topic, "developing novel deep neural network architectures from probabilistic models" stems from MERL work with collaborators Jonathan Le Roux and Shinji Watanabe, on a principled framework that seeks to improve our understanding of deep neural networks, and draws inspiration for new types of deep network from the arsenal of principles and tools developed over the years for conventional probabilistic models. The tutorial covers a range of parallel ideas in the literature that have formed a recent trend, as well as their application to speech and language.
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- Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 - Friday, December 16, 2016
Location: San Diego, California
Research Area: Speech & Audio
Brief - The IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology is a premier international showcase for advances in spoken language technology. The theme for 2016 is "machine learning: from signal to concepts," which reflects the current excitement about end-to-end learning in speech and language processing. This year, MERL is showing its support for SLT as one of its top sponsors, along with Amazon and Microsoft.
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- Date & Time: Thursday, December 8, 2016; 4:00-7:00pm
Location: 201 Broadway, 8th Floor, Cambridge, MA
MERL Contacts: Elizabeth Phillips; Anthony Vetro Brief - Snacks, demos, science: On Thursday 12/8, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) will host an open house for graduate+ students interested in internships, post-docs, and research scientist positions. The event will be held from 4-7pm and will feature demos & short presentations in our main areas of research: algorithms, multimedia, electronics, communications, computer vision, speech processing, optimization, machine learning, data analytics, mechatronics, dynamics, control, and robotics. MERL is a high impact publication-oriented research lab with very extensive internship and university collaboration programs. Most internships lead to publication; many of our interns and staff have gone on to notable careers at MERL and in academia. Come mix with our researchers, see our state of the art technologies, and learn about our research opportunities. Dress code: casual, with resumes.
Pre-registration for the event is strongly encouraged:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/merl-open-house-tickets-29408503626
Current internship and employment openings:
http://www.merl.com/internship/openings
http://www.merl.com/employment/employment.
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- Date & Time: Wednesday, November 16, 2016; 3:30-6:30pm
Location: Sheraton Commander (16 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA)
MERL Contacts: Elizabeth Phillips; Anthony Vetro Brief - MERL will be participating in the Engineering Career Fair Collaborative, which is being held on November 16, 2016 at the Sheraton Commander in Cambridge from 3:30-6:30pm. Graduate students with an interest in learning about internship and other employment opportunities at MERL are invited to visit our booth. Staff members will be on hand to discuss current openings. We will also be showing some demonstrations of current research projects.
Current internship and employment openings:
http://www.merl.com/internship/openings
http://www.merl.com/employment/employment.
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- Date: October 11, 2016
Where: MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Signal Processing
Brief - Dr. Rui Ma was invited to give a talk on Modern Topics in Power Amplifier, which was IEEE Chapter course organized by IEEE Boston Section.
This five week lecture series intended to give a tutorial overview of the latest developments in power amplifier technology. It began with a review of RF power amplifier concepts then teaches the modern MMIC design flow process. Efficiency, and linearization techniques were discussed in the following weeks. The course was concluded with a hands on demonstration and exercise.
Dr. Ma was addressing the advancement of Digital Transmitter as a enabling technology for next generation wireless communications.
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- Date: Friday, October 21, 2016
Location: MIT, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Cambridge, MA
MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
Research Area: Speech & Audio
Brief - SANE 2016, a one-day event gathering researchers and students in speech and audio from the Northeast of the American continent, will be held on Friday October 21, 2016 at MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, in Cambridge, MA.
It is a follow-up to SANE 2012 (Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs - MERL), SANE 2013 (Columbia University), SANE 2014 (MIT CSAIL), and SANE 2015 (Google NY). Since the first edition, the audience has steadily grown, gathering 140 researchers and students in 2015.
SANE 2016 will feature invited talks by leading researchers: Juan P. Bello (NYU), William T. Freeman (MIT/Google), Nima Mesgarani (Columbia University), DAn Ellis (Google), Shinji Watanabe (MERL), Josh McDermott (MIT), and Jesse Engel (Google). It will also feature a lively poster session during lunch time, open to both students and researchers.
SANE 2016 is organized by Jonathan Le Roux (MERL), Josh McDermott (MIT), Jim Glass (MIT), and John R. Hershey (MERL).
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- Date: September 8, 2016
Where: Interspeech 2016, San Francisco, CA
MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
Research Area: Speech & Audio
Brief - MERL Speech and Audio Team researchers Shinji Watanabe and Jonathan Le Roux presented two tutorials on September 8 at the Interspeech 2016 conference, held in San Francisco, CA. Shinji collaborated with Marc Delcroix (NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Japan) to deliver a three-hour lecture on "Recent Advances in Distant Speech Recognition", drawing upon their experience organizing and participating in six different recent robust speech processing challenges. Jonathan teamed with Emmanuel Vincent (Inria, France) and Hakan Erdogan (Sabanci University, Microsoft Research) to give an in-depth tour of the latest advances in "Learning-based Approaches to Speech Enhancement And Separation". This collaboration stemmed from extensive stays at MERL by Emmanuel and Hakan, Emmanuel as a summer visitor, and Hakan as a MERL visiting research scientist for over a year while on sabbatical.
Both tutorials were sold out, each attracting more than 100 researchers and students in related fields, and received high praise from audience members.
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- Date & Time: Friday, September 23, 2016; 12:00 PM- 1:00 PM
Speaker: Dr. Earl McCune, Eridan Communications
Research Areas: Communications, Signal Processing
Abstract 
To maximize the operating energy efficiency of any wireless communication link requires a global optimization not only across the entire block diagram, but also including the selected signal modulation and aspects of the link operating protocol. Achieving this global optimization is first examined for the transmitter, receiver, and baseband circuitry. Then the important aspects of signal modulation necessary to access these circuit optimizations, with examples, are presented, followed by the correspondingly important protocol aspects needed. A metric called modulation-available energy efficiency (MAEE) compares proposed signals for compatibility with high energy efficiency objectives.
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- Date: September 19, 2016
Where: 2016 European Conference on Optical Communication, Dusseldorf Germany
MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Kieran Parsons
Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Signal Processing
Brief - Four papers from the Optical Comms team will be presented at ECOC2016 to be held in Dusseldorf, Germany from 19-21 September 2016. A fifth paper in collaboration with our colleagues in Japan will also be presented. ECOC is the largest conference on optical communication in Europe. The papers relate to high performance modulation formats, nonlinearity compensation and error correction coding for coherent optical links.
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- Date: June 27, 2016 - June 30, 2016
Where: 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Las Vegas, NV
MERL Contacts: Michael J. Jones; Tim K. Marks
Research Area: Machine Learning
Brief - MERL researchers in the Computer Vision group presented three papers at the 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2016), which had a paper acceptance rate of 29.9%.
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- Date & Time: Wednesday, August 17, 2016; 1 PM
Speaker: Gilles Zerah, Centre Francais en Calcul Atomique et Moleculaire-Ile-de-France (CFCAM-IdF)
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electronic and Photonic Devices
Abstract - The first part of the talk is a high-level review of modern technologies for atomic-level modelling of materials. The second part discusses band gap calculations and MERL results for semi-conductors.
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- Date & Time: Friday, July 22, 2016; 12:00 Noon
Location: Cambridge Brewery
MERL Contacts: Elizabeth Phillips; Jinyun Zhang Brief - MERL hosted its 2nd Annual "Women In Science Celebration". MERL's current team of female interns discussed and celebrated the contributions they've made during their internships at MERL.
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- Date & Time: Wednesday, July 13, 2016; 2:30 PM - 3:30
Speaker: Richard Lehoucq, Sandia National Laboratories
Research Areas: Computer Vision, Digital Video, Machine Learning
Abstract 
My presentation considers the research question of whether existing algorithms and software for the large-scale sparse eigenvalue problem can be applied to problems in spectral graph theory. I first provide an introduction to several problems involving spectral graph theory. I then provide a review of several different algorithms for the large-scale eigenvalue problem and briefly introduce the Anasazi package of eigensolvers.
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- Date & Time: Monday, July 11, 2016; 10 AM - 9:15 PM
Location: Westin Boston Waterfront Pavilion, Boston, Massachusetts
MERL Contacts: Matthew Brand; Arvind Raghunathan Brief - MERL researchers participate in SIAM Job fair to showcase MERL's research and highlight employment and intern opportunities at MERL. The Career Fair emphasizes careers in business, industry, and government, and takes place during the SIAM Annual Meeting.
The SIAM Applied Mathematics and Computational Science Career Fair is an informational and interactive event at which employers and prospective employees can discuss careers. It is a great opportunity for prospective employees to meet government and industry representatives and discuss what they are looking for and what each employer has to offer.
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