Machine Perception Lab at UCSD in ABC News

Lee Dye from ABC wrote a great story about UC San Diego computer science PhD student Jacob Whitehill's automated facial recognition research. The first couple graphs are below. Read the full story here.

A Computer That Can Read Your Mind
Facial Recognition Program Makes For Better Virtual Teachers
By LEE DYE

July 7, 2008 —

One of these days your computer will probably know what you are thinking before you know it yourself. The human face conveys emotions ranging from fear to confusion to lying, sometimes involuntarily, and scientists are figuring out how to make use of those expressions.

At the University of California at San Diego, for example, a graduate student has developed a program that will slow down or speed up a video based entirely on changes in his facial expressions, like a slight frown, or a smile. The purpose of this particular program is to make robotic instructors more responsive to their student's needs, but there are many other potential applications for the work.

"The project I'm working on is how can we use machine perception, including things like facial expressions, to improve interactivity between students and teachers," said Jacob Whitehill, a computer science doctoral candidate. "That includes human teachers, and also robotic teachers, which is something our lab is increasingly interested in."

Whitehill has tested his

Undergrads are Bioinformatics Pioneers

UC San Diego bioinformatics undergrads published their pioneering work on "comparative proteogenomics" in the July 2008 issue of the prestigious journal Genome Research. Abstract here.

You can watch a video of two of the students here on YouTube:


Right now, you can read the release and watch the video on the Jacobs School news site.

Also, Howard Hughes Medical Institute has a nice story about the same project. Much of the funding that enabled Pevzner to put UC San Diego undergrads right at the cutting edge of bioinformatics research came from Howard Huges. Read the grant announcement story here.

Calit2 Life

Calit2 just launched Calit2.Life -- a super cool group blog. Here is the press release. The initial roster of contributors includes roughly one dozen senior Calit2 personnel, communications staff and directors of affiliated research centers. Over time, more contributors will be added to ensure that Calit2.Life remains representative of people and activities on both campuses.

Check it out!

He turned his face into a remote control

Computer science PhD student Jacob Whitehill turned his face into a remote control. The proof-of-concept demonstration is part of a larger project to use automated facial expression recognition to make robots more effective teachers.


One of the news blogs from the journal Nature picked up the story.

Discover Magazine blogged about the research today too.

Jake got Slashdotted as well, via NetworkWorld.

The LA Times linked to the NetworkWorld story from their Tech blog.

The Chronicle of Higher Education took a slightly different angle on the story.


Watch Jacob Whitehill turn his face into a remote control in a three minute video.

View a one minute video Jacob Whitehill created to communicate his research results.

Ring Ceremony 2008 at the Jacobs School

Here are a few photos from the 2008 Ring Ceremony.









Jacobs School Oath:

As a graduate of the Jacobs School of Engineering, I pledge to use my knowledge for the public good, to innovate for the advancement of humanity, and to be accountable to future generations. As a member of the engineering community, I dedicate myself to lifelong learning and to the growth of my field. I promise to always conduct myself with honor and to uphold the strong ethical values instilled in me by the Jacobs School. I accept this ring as a symbol of this oath

Graphics Rendering Competition

It's June in San Diego and that means another graphics competition in the computer science department at UC San Diego. The competition marks the end of the Spring 2008 "CSE168 Rendering Algorithms" class with Henrik Wann Jensen.

The students in the class were asked to render a realistic object or scene of their own choosing, and the images were judged by an external panel of experts (the best student image would be rewarded with a trip to SIGGRAPH 2008). The winners and honorable mentions were selected based on the quality of their rendered images and the technical difficulty.

Bin Chen won the grand prize for his "Magical Lotus" graphic.

Bin created a realistic scene depicting two lotus flowers in a pond. He implemented a number of techniques including translucency using photon mapping, depth of field, ray marching, tone mapping, and bloom.

how sweet is this UC San Diego photo?

Have a favorite UCSD photo? Link to it in the comments section.

Photo credit? Well, I don't know who took the picture, but I found it in the Flikr photostream run by the UCSD chapter of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi (TBP). They won the most outstanding chapter award last year.