Events Calendar

CS Colloquium

Speaker: Prof. Shawn Newsam, UC Merced

Talk Title: Proximate Sensing: Inferring What-Is-Where From Georeferenced Photo Collections

Abstract: In this talk, I will describe an interesting new research direction which I term Proximate Sensing that leverages ground-level georeferenced images to map what-is-where on the surface of the Earth much like the field of Remote Sensing has done for decades using overhead imagery. Enabled by the growing collections of community contributed photo collections, Proximate Sensing represents a rich framework in which to apply and evaluate current image understanding tasks such as scene classification and object recognition as well as motivate the development of novel problems. I will describe how Proximate Sensing can be considered part of the larger phenomena of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), a term coined by geographer Michael Goodchild in 2007 to refer to the growing collections of geographically relevant information provided voluntarily by individuals.

While most of my talk will focus on Proximate Sensing, I will also give an overview of UC Merced, the tenth and newest campus of the University of California system, as well as briefly describe some of the other research projects my group is working on.

Biography: Dr. Shawn Newsam is an assistant professor and founding faculty of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) at the University of California at Merced. He received a BS in EECS from UC Berkeley, an MS in Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) from UC Davis, and a PhD in ECE from UC Santa Barbara. Prior to joining UC Merced in 2005, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Applied Scientific Computing at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (so, if you are counting, he is now at his fifth UC institution). His research interests are in image processing, computer vision, and pattern recognition particularly as applied to interdisciplinary scientific problems. He is the recipient of an Early Career Scientist and Engineer Award from the Department of Energy, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Host: Prof. Farnoush Banaei-Kashani, USC

Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 151

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Kanak Agrawal