Current Research Interests

My current research concentrates on the development of next-generation algorithms and systems for coding and processing of digital signals, especially multimedia - from fundamental theory to practical designs and efficient implementations. The focus is on providing versatility, flexibility, adaptivity, and scalability in all aspects of a modern state-of-the-art digital multimedia processing/communication systems. The favorite approach has been divide-and-conquer, seeking to construct highly complex systems from modular cascades of similar, simple building blocks, each propagating a set of desired properties. Some of the algorithm/system features under investigation are:

• integer, finite-precision, sometimes even multiplierless, fast low-power VLSI implementations for real-time systems, wireless applications, and handheld devices
• signal adaptivity and optimality in the rate-distortion sense for high coding efficiency
• resolution, rate-distortion, and complexity scalability to facilitate ubiquitous multimedia computing/transmission
• built-in regularity constraints for robust smooth approximation and superior reconstructed visual quality
• low memory buffering and locally computable capability for simple low-cost implementations
• improving system performance while minimizing modifications of existing infrastructures in hardware as well as software.

Students

• Thong Do, Ph.D. candidate
• Lijie Liu, Ph.D. candidate
• Vi Nguyen, Ph.D. candidate
• Carlos Salazar, Ph.D. candidate
• Iman El-Shehaby, Ph.D. candidate
• John P. Stralka, Ph.D. candidate
• Peter Vouras, Ph.D. candidate
• Quang Gia Le, Master candidate

Alumni

• Wei Dai, Ph.D. 05/2005.
  Dissertation: Adaptive Block-based Decomposition with Pre-/Post-Filtering
  Current Position: Member of Technical Staff, FastVDO LLC, Columbia, MD, USA.
• Jie Liang, Ph.D. 12/2003.
  Dissertation: Filter Bank Design for Image/Video Compression and Digital Communications
  Current Position: Assistant Professor, School of Engineering Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
• Chengjie Tu, Ph.D. 12/2003.
  Dissertation: Pre-/Post-Filtering and Context Modeling for DCT Based Block Coding Systems
  Current Position: Codec Engineer, Video Codec Group, Microsoft Digital Media Division, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA.