Understanding Photos of People Using Social Context

Speaker: Tsuhan Chen, Cornell University

Abstract: Our eyes and brains are fine-tuned to view and analyze images of people. When we view an image of people, we can make judgment very effectively. For example, we can easily come up with demographic descriptions of people in the image. We can also answer other questions related to the activities of, and relationships between, people in the image. All that reasoning happens not only because of what our eyes see, but also how our brain draws "prior," or context, from experiences. In this talk, we will present some recent discovery in how computer algorithms can be developed to do the same as our brain, that is, to use social context to understand photos of people. This approach has a lot of potential, as the number of photos shared by users of social networks increases exponentially.

Bio: Tsuhan Chen has been with Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, since January 2009, where he is the David E. Burr Professor of Engineering and Director of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. From October 1997 to December 2008, he was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as
Professor, and as Associate Department Head in 2007-2008. From August 1993 to October 1997, he worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey.  He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, in 1990 and 1993. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University in 1987.  He received the Benjamin Richard Teare Teaching Award in 2006, and the Eta Kappa Nu Award for Outstanding Faculty Teaching in 2007. He was elected to the Board of Governors of IEEE Signal Processing Society, 2007-2009, and a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Signal Processing Society, 2007-2008. In 2012, he was elected as the Vice President of ECE Department Head Association, and will serve as the President in 2013.  He is
a Fellow of IEEE.