BrainSurge

Speaker: Parisa Behnamfar

Topic: An introduction to the motion estimation techniques in video codecs

Widespread application of digital video images has increased the demand to store such data in finite memory space and to transmit them over channels with limited bandwidth. This increasing demand represents a critical need to compress video images. Since in most cases, successive video frames contain the same objects, “motion estimation” techniques examin the movement of objects in an image to define the differences between two consecutive frames. Then the compression algorithms store the first frame and then just the extra information produced by the motion estimation technique. In this way, lots of the temporal redundancy due to the high correlation between consecutive frames would be eliminated, resulting in a very high compression ratio. This talk is going to introduce some of the most common motion estimation techniques, their advantages and their drawbacks.

BIOGRAPHY
Parisa Behnamfar has got her B.Sc. and M.Sc. both in Electrical Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran. She is now PhD student and research assistant in the System on Chip lab of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of British Columbia.

Speaker: Roger Miller and Jennifer Flexman

Topic: Intellectual Property: Why Should Engineers Care About It

Abstract
Students learn to create intellectual property at university. Whether you go to graduate school, start your own business, or work in a company, you are likely to create, access, and use intellectual property. What is IP, why is it valuable, and how do you protect it? You will learn about patents and copyright, your rights and obligations, and how you can use these to further your career.

Biography
Roger Miller, Ph.D. is the Manager of Technology Transfer in UBC University Industry Liaison Office.

Speaker: Oliver Zheng

Topic: Photoshop Workshop

This Thursday Lunch and Learn session will feature a workshop on Photoshop, in which a complete composition will be presented from start to finish, touching on various techniques throughout. Bring your lunch, and optionally your laptop with Photoshop installed if you want to follow along!

Speaker: Adam Noel

Topic: Game Theory: What a Dilemma!

Game theory as a field of study has already been extensively developed over the last 60 years. While most of its applications have been in economics, the concepts of game theory can be related to many areas of electrical and computer engineering. This talk will focus on a social perspective of game theory to present the classical 7 “Deadly Dilemmas” - including the prisoner’s dilemma, chicken, battle of the sexes, stag hunt, and others. Some basic qualitative mechanics of game theory will be introduced so that we can understand these dilemmas and potentially manipulate the games to resolve them. Applications in ECE will also be noted.

BIOGRAPHY

Adam Noel obtained his B.Eng from Memorial University in St. John’s, NL. His co-op experiences include the defence (General Dynamics) and telecommunications (Alcatel-Lucent) industries. He has also worked with the Communications Research Centre in Ottawa and the Institute for Ocean Technology in St. John’s. He is currently a MASc student in the UBC ECE Communications group, with a general interest in cognitive radio.

Speaker 1: Angshul Majumdar

TOPIC: Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Traditional methods to reduce energy consumption are not optimally designed for energy saving. They tinker with the different networking protocols or propose application and data dependent sensing mechanisms which bring only slight improvement in energy efficiency. To bring in the next level of energy reduction, we rely on recent theoretical breakthroughs in maths. I will discuss how the sensor network problem can be framed as a problem of matrix completion from sub-sampled entries, similar to the Netflix problem. The discussion will be devoid of maths, it will only include intuitive insights and qualitative understanding of the problem. Some astonishing results will also be shown.

BIOGRAPHY
Angshul Majumdar completed his Bachelor’s degree from Bengal Engineering and Science University, India. Before joining UBC as a grad student in 2007, he was working in Technology Advisory Service for PricewaterhouseCoopers.
He completed his Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC. Currently he is a PhD student at the Signal and Image Processing Lab. In the last term, he went for a research internship at Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton. He worked on the signal processing aspects of MR imaging for next generation scanners which are supposed to cut current scan times by 60-80%. Angshul is mainly interested in signal processing algorithms with applications as diverse as Medial Image Reconstruction, Color and Hyperspectral Imaging and Energy Efficient Distributed Sensor Networks.

Speaker 2: Roee Diamant

TOPIC: Spatial Reuse Protocols for Ad-Hoc Underwater Acoustic Communication Network

The oceans, covering two thirds of the Earth’s surface, represent one of the last frontiers for exploration and science. Wireless information transmission through the ocean is one of the enabling technologies for the development of future ocean-observation systems, whose applications include gathering of scientific data, pollution control, climate monitoring, detection of objects, and transmission of images from remote places. Wireless communication underwater is usually established using acoustic transducers since radio frequency communication is only possible for very short distances underwater. In this talk we will discuss the challenges of underwater acoustic communication network design and research possibilities in this area.

BIOGRAPHY
Roee Diamant obtained his M.Sc and B.Sc from Israel Institute of Technology, Technion. He has a wide-range of industry experience as well, working for a year in the biomedical industry as a researcher and 7 years at Rafael as a group leader, project manager and system engineer. As such, he was awarded first place in the annual Israel excellent worker distinction for 2009. Today, Roee is working on his PhD on “Underwater Acoustic Communication Networks” in the communication lab here at UBC.

The IEEE student branch is kickstarting a new series of events at Thursday noon each week. It will be a relaxed environment where people can drop-in to see whatever is going on. The show can range from anything interesting, inspirational or educational.

If you would like to come to present anything or have an idea/feedback for us, feel free to email us at lunch dot and dot learn at ieeeubc dot org

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