Q & A with IMSC’s New Director Adam Powell

 

When Dean C. L. Max Nikias named Adam Clayton Powell III, to be the new director of the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), he hailed him as “a creative technologist, outstanding leader and the ideal person to take IMSC through its next phase.”

 

In addition to Powell, Nikias announced several other leadership changes at IMSC.  Chis Kyriakakis a longstanding IMSC research leader in immersive media and a member electrical engineering faculty became deputy director.  Computer scientist Ulrich Neumann, who had served as IMSC’s director since 2001, became associate director for research.  Other associate directors are Anthony Borquez, for education; Alexander Sawchuk, who will be responsible for research instrumentation and research in 3-D displays; and Mike Zyda who will be associate director for games technology. 

 

In 1996, the National Science Foundation selected USC's proposal for the IMSC over 117 others to make it the exclusive NSF Engineering Research Center for multimedia and Internet research.  Since then, the IMSC has been developing unique Internet and multimedia technologies.  Applications of IMSC technologies have found their way into distance education, teleconferencing and musical performance.  Many have also been commercialized and are in use by Hollywood companies and consumer electronics manufacturers.  Remote Media Immersion to capture, transmit and render immersive sound and high-definition video over the Internet, is the combination of several of these technologies.

 

As of last year, IMSC researchers had published 439 peer-reviewed articles in technical journals, 1,387 articles in peer-reviewed conference proceedings, and another 29 in trade journals.  The IMSC Press has published 10 books with Prentice Hall PTR. In its first eight years, IMSC funding totaled more than $70 million and 68 companies funded IMSC research.  The IMSC has filed 106 invention disclosures and 56 patent applications.  Six patents and 84 licenses have already been issued. 

 

The IMSC has also contributed its unique flavor to USC’s mix of educational programs with six distinct and successful education programs in multimedia and creative technologies.  These include four new M.S. degree programs and two new B.S. degree minors. A total of 237 students have graduated from USC who participated in IMSC.  This includes 16 B.S., 85 M.S. and 136 Ph.D. students.  Last year alone, we had 142 doctoral, 61 masters, and 29 undergraduate students working on IMSC projects.

 

As part of its educational outreach, the IMSC started the Multimedia University Academy (MUA), to provide high-tech skills to at-risk, inner-city youth and help them find jobs or attend college.  Another outreach program re-trained and placed more than 235 unemployed workers between 1996-1999.

 

During its first phase, IMSC organized and began to build ambitious research, education and industry collaboration programs around a far-reaching vision.  In its second phase, the transformation of the vision into real technologies has taken place successfully.  Now that IMSC is entering a third phase, USC Viterbi Engineer interviewed Powell to learn more about IMSC’s next phase.

 

We are going to be moving technologies into society more rapidly through partnerships with key industries, arts institutions, and K-12 schools, with an emphasis on connecting with underserved communities.  At the same time, will continue to move the research program forward and pursue more cross-disciplinary collaborations with other USC units, and with entities outside of USC.  increasing focus on video game technologies to take advantage of our location in the hub of that industry…

 

The strategic plan talks about meeting societal needs, expanding our global presence and promoting learner-centered education.  The NSF started the ERC program with societal needs in mind.  A major goal of ERCs is to rapidly develop technologies deemed critical to the nation and to arm the workforce with the skills needed to compete globally in these critical areas. So, I believe the IMSC has been meeting societal needs and promoting learner-centered education since it began.  We’ve been less successful establishing a global presence, but that is something we’re going to work very hard on in this next phase.

 

 

We’ve had longstanding collaborations with Annenberg Center for Communication and with the Annenberg School.  In more recent years, we’ve started some exciting projects with Thornton School of Music. Some of our researchers have been involved with ICT (Institute for Creative Technologies) since it began, and that will increase.  We’re working more closely with ISI (Information Sciences Institute) and I certainly see productive partnerships with many other USC units.

 

 

Southern California is the world center of the video game industry and USC has all of the ingredients that go into video games.  But it is spread all around the university in many different units.  It is a real opportunity for all of us to form great cross-disciplinary collaborations and leverage our individual strengths.  And the industry really needs this kind of support.  In the future, the near future, hit games are going to come from engineers with M.S. degrees who understand AI (artificial intelligence) and who can use it to create rich characters and compelling interactive stories. They’ll have to work very closely with story tellers and artists to be successful.  IMSC has been oriented to such collaborations since its inception so I think we are in a great position to provide leadership in this area.

 

 

We are expanding our outreach to K-12 educators, to low-income and traditionally disadvantaged communities, to disabled users and to international partners who are not typical members of high-technology collaborations, such as rural Africa.

 

We want to forge partnerships with institutions that can use the unique set of tools IMSC has developed and is developing to address a broad range needs of societies here and in other parts of the world. We already know there are applications in education, in health care, in arts and culture and museums. But we also already are being approached by prospective partners with applications that we had not considered for immersive and augmented realities.

 

The key in all of these areas is that IMSC’s research is Web-based. That means it is accessible wherever we have decent Internet connections, which nowadays is almost anywhere. In my technology work, I’ve been to remote towns in places ranging from the Andes and to the middle of the Sahara, and it’s been years since I have found any location that is not connected, sometimes in novel and surprisingly effective ways, to the Internet.

 

Of course some of the best immersive experiences are available over Internet 2, which reaches a much smaller universe, but compression is getting better all the time.