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Dear all,

On Wednesday, 25th April at 2:00pm, Wenwu Wang will present the seminar 
'Dictionary learning algorithms and their applications in source 
separation, speaker tracking, and image denoising'.

The talk will take place in room 209 in the Electronic Engineering 
building, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS.

Directions on how to access the building can be found at 
http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/about/campus-map.php. If you are coming from 
outside Queen Mary, please let me know, so I can make sure no-one is stuck 
outside the doors. Details of future seminars can be found at 
http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/newsevents/researchgroupevents.php?i=12.

All are welcome to attend. For those unable to do so, a video recording of 
the seminar will be made available online after a few days.

If you wish to be added to / removed from our mailing list, please send me 
an email and I'll be happy to do so.


Wednesday's seminar (25th April, 2:00pm):

Title:

Dictionary learning algorithms and their applications in source 
separation, speaker tracking, and image denoising

Speaker:

Wenwu Wang

Abstract:

Two related problems have been studied either separately or jointly in 
sparse representations: sparse coding, that is, to find the sparse linear 
decompositions of a signal for a given dictionary (i.e. the collection of 
all codewords), and dictionary design. An over-complete dictionary, one in 
which the number of codewords is greater than the dimension of the signal, 
can be obtained by either an analytical (using a predefined transform e.g. 
DCT) or a learning-based approach. In learning-based approaches, the 
dictionaries are adapted from a set of training data. Although this may 
involve higher computational complexity, learned dictionaries have the 
potential to offer improved performance as compared with predefined 
dictionaries, since the atoms are derived to capture the salient 
information directly from the signals. Dictionary learning algorithms are 
often established on an optimization process involving the iteration 
between two stages: sparse approximation and dictionary update. This talk 
will discuss dictionary learning algorithms with particular application 
interest in source separation, speaker tracking, and image denoising. 
Focus will be placed on a new method for dictionary update, called 
simultaneous codeword optimisation (SimCO), which essentially generalises 
the well-known optimisation framework employed in K-SVD and MOD. Some 
preliminary results on applying dictionary learning techniques to 
multimodal tracking of moving speakers will also be demonstrated.

Bio:

Wenwu Wang has been with the Center for Vision Speech and Signal 
Processing, at University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, since May 2007, where 
he is currently a Lecturer. He previously held the prestigious RCUK 
Fellowship in machine audio perception. His research and teaching 
interests include blind signal processing, machine learning and 
perception, and machine audition (listening). During spring 2008, he has 
been a visiting scholar with The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA, 
working at (with sponsorship from) the Perception and Neurodynamics Lab 
and the Center for Cognitive Science.

Previously, from September 2006 to April 2007, he was with Creative 
Technology Ltd, as a Software R&D Engineer, at the Sensaura Division, 
Egham, UK, working on 3D positional audio technology for embedded systems 
and mobile devices. From May 2005 to August 2006, he was a DSP Engineer 
with Tao Group Ltd (now Antix Labs Ltd), Reading, UK, working on algorithm 
design for audio, music and video systems based on a real-time multimedia 
platform. Before that, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate, from 
January 2004 to April 2005, with the School of Engineering, Cardiff 
University, Cardiff, UK, and from May 2002 to December 2003, with King's 
College London, London, UK, working on blind signal processing for audio, 
speech and biomedical signals.

He received the B.Sc. degree in 1997, the M.E. degree in 2000, and the 
Ph.D. degree in 2002, all from Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 
China, where he also received the Outstanding Graduate Award, the 
Excellent Paper Award, the Excellent Thesis Award and numerous 
Scholarships for academic excellence. He was awarded the PGCAP certificate 
in July 2010 from the University of Surrey.

He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Member of the ISCA, a 
Senior Member of the IEEE, and belongs to the IEEE Signal Processing, 
Circuits and Systems, and Computational Intelligence Societies. He has 
served or currently serves as a reviewer, program committee member, or 
editor for a number of international journals and conferences. He was 
acknowledged as an Appreciated Reviewer for IEEE Trans. on Signal 
Processing in Jan 2008. He has been listed in Marquis Who's Who in the 
World (in both the 25th Silver Anniversary Edition in 2008 and the 26th 
Edition in 2009).

His research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research 
Council (EPSRC), Ministry of Defence (MOD), Defence Science and Technology 
Laboratory (DSTL), Home Office (HO), Royal Academy of Engineering (RAENG), 
and the University Research Support Fund (URSF).



Future C4DM seminars (Seminar details tbc):

Ramani Duraiswami - University of Maryland; VisiSonics Corporation
Thu 26th April 2012

Martyn Davies - Six Two Productions
Wed 9th May 2012

Miguel Rodrigues - University College London
Wed 16th May 2012





--
Peter Foster
Postgraduate Research Student
Room 104, Electronic Engineering Bldg
Centre for Digital Music
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
email: [log in to unmask]