清华大学深圳研究生院-香港中文大学工程学院 媒体科学、技术与系统联合研究中心

Dr. Lei Xie，associate professor from Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU) at Xi'an, visited Tsinghua-CUHK Joint Research Center for Media Sciences, Technologies and Systems (MJRC) on December 4, 2008.  Dr.Xie delivered a speech on "Speech-driven Talking Face for Interactive Human-Computer Communication" to the students of MJRC.

 Dr. Lei Xie is currently an Associate Professor in the Audio, Speech & Language Processing Group (ASLP), School and Computer Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU) at Xi'an.  He received Ph.D. degree from NWPU in 2004 in computer science.  From 2001 to 2002, he was with the Department of Electronics and Information Processing, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium as a visiting researcher.  From 2004 to 2006, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Media Technology (RCMT), School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.  From 2006 to 2007, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Human-Computer Communications Laboratory (HCCL), Department of Systems Engineering & Engineering Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.  He is a member of IEEE, a member of SIG-CSLP and a senior member of CCF.  He also served as reviewers for many international referred journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech & Language Processing and Pattern recognition, etc. His current research interest includes talking face, multimedia retrieval, speech recognition, multimedia signal processing and pattern recognition.

Dr. Bo Yuan, lecturer from the Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, was invited to deliver a lecture on "How to write a research paper" on December 2, 2008.

Dr. Bo Yuan received the B.E. degree from Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China, in 1998, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Queensland, Australia, in 2002 and 2006 respectively.  From 2006 to 2007, he was a Research Officer on a project funded by the Australian Research Council at The University of Queensland.

He is currently a Lecturer in the Division of Information, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, China.　

The proposal on "personalized modeling of audio and visual speech prosodic patterns" was approved by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) on September 5, 2008.

The proposal aims to study the patterns of prosodic correlates of the speaker from both audio and visual modalities, and to find the differences of prosodic patterns between different speakers, and finally to propose a model which can represent and capture such differences.  The project will be jointly carried out under the collaboration between Tsinghua University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University (THSZ) and Faculty of Engineering, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), launched a signing ceremony for collaboration agreement on the establishment of "Tsinghua-CUHK Joint Research Center for Media Sciences, Technologies and Systems" at CUHK, November 29, 2007.  Prof. Zhicheng Guan, dean of THSZ, Prof. Hui Ma, associate dean of THSZ, Prof. Pak-chung Ching, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, CUHK and Prof. Helen M. Meng, Associate Dean, Faculty of Engineering, presented the ceremony.

Delegation from THSZ led by Prof. Guan visited CUHK on November 29, 2007.  The delegates had a meeting with Prof. Pak-chung Ching, Prof. Wing shing Wong and Prof. Helen M. Meng.

The collaboration agreement was signed by THSZ and CUHK to enhance and expand the academic communication for top universities in China and Hong Kong.

One Year Establishment Anniversary of "Tsinghua-CUHK Joint Research Center for Media Sciences, Technologies and Systems" Symposium was held at THSZ, November 27, 2007.  Prof. Wenhuang Liu, Prof. YuZhuo Zhong, Prof. Qingmin Liao, THSZ and around 30 scholars from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Sun Yat-sen University, Northwestern Normal University, Institute of Acoustic Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), France Telecom R&D Beijing and Tsinghua University attended the seminar.

At the morning session, Prof. Liu acknowledged the achievement of MJRC for the past one year and wished a great success of this symposium.  Prof. Helen M. Meng and Prof. Lianhong Cai gave speech to thank the substantial support from graduate school of both universities.

Prof. David Zhang (the Hong Kong Polytechnic University), Prof. Jiwu Huang (Sun Yat-sen University), Prof. Charlie C. Wang (CUHK) and other specialists in the field of multimedia technology delivered speeches on topics of "medical biometrics", "digital security technology in image processing", "graphic computing" etc.  Prof. Helen M. Meng and Associate Prof. Chun Yuan also gave speeches in representativeness of MJRC.

The afternoon session was group discussion.  Three groups focused on "Speech processing and interaction", "multimedia processing and digital rights management" and "computer graphics and computational geometry" respectively.  All participants interactively discussed and exchanged ideas on the respective research topics.  Especially, Prof. Shinan Lv, CAS, from "Speech processing and interaction" group discussed current issues on speech synthesis and process with other specialists and students.  After the discussion, all participants visited laboratory of MJRC.

Since the establishment of MJRC, THSZ and CUHK have experienced successful collaboration and communication: Successful application of "Guangdong-Hong Kong Technology Cooperation Funding Scheme"; Well praised hosting the second "Beijing-Hong Kong International Doctoral Forum" which is organized by Tsinghua University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong; Inviting scholars from oversea institutes and universities to deliver lectures; Well organizing joint postgraduate research program, etc.