Events Calendar

ECE Seminar: Optics, Sensors & AI: Next-Generation Computational Imaging

Speaker: Dr. Vivek Boominathan, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University

Talk Title: Optics, Sensors & AI: Next-Generation Computational Imaging

Abstract: Rapidly growing machine learning techniques such as deep learning have produced powerful computer vision algorithms. However, these algorithms usually apply to images and videos captured with traditional camera designs that have been principally unchanged for decades. Furthermore, real-world applications such as robotics, autonomous navigation, augmented/virtual reality, human-computer interaction, biomedical, and IoT need systems that adhere to fundamental constraints such as size, weight, power, and privacy. These fundamental constraints cannot be addressed by a software-only solution but demand a joint hardware-software solution. In my talk, I will present end-to-end computational imaging systems that execute "computation" at all stages of a physical vision system, from optics to sensors to algorithms. Novel optics such as diffractive and metamaterial optics provide new dimensions of light manipulation, while novel sensors such as SPADs offer new dimensions in light transduction. I will highlight algorithms and AI to explore these new dimensions and accessible nanofabrication techniques to realize novel optics and sensors. I will show applications from photographic 3D imaging to in vivo 3D imaging, achieved using compact coded aperture systems and ultraminiature lensless imaging systems. I will conclude by describing how my works set the stage for designing next-generation imaging systems for various future applications such as biomedical imaging, robotics, IoT, and human-computer interaction.

Biography: Dr. Vivek Boominathan is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. He received his Ph.D. in 2019, advised by Prof. Ashok Veeraraghavan, and co-advised by Prof. Jacob Robinson and Prof. Richard Baraniuk. His research interests lie at the intersection of computer vision, machine learning, applied optics, and nanofabrication. His contributions have appeared in a broad spectrum of venues such as Science Advances, Nature BME, IEEE journals, optics journals, vision conferences, and circuits conferences. He has also published a review article, in Optica, around his Ph.D. topic of lensless imaging. His work has been covered by news media such as EurekAlert, NPR, Phys.org, and NDTV India. He has co-organized a tutorial on Computational Imaging and Machine Learning in CVPR 2019 and has served as the publication co-chair for ICCP since 2020. More details can be found at https://vivekboominathan.com/.


Host: Dr. Shri Narayanan, shri@ee.usc.edu

Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/96039656028?pwd=RnVxeGx3aEZ3RTNsTW5PajFWakN2Zz09

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/96039656028?pwd=RnVxeGx3aEZ3RTNsTW5PajFWakN2Zz09

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher