Vision is a complex process that can understand the physical environment for different tasks in a fast and efficient way. Computer vision studies programmable algorithms that assign intelligence to computers such that computers can process and understand the images as the human vision does. While computer vision usually solves the problems from 2D to 3D, computer graphics studies problems in an inverse way, i.e., from 3D to 2D. In between computer vision and computer graphics, media encoding and decoding plays an important role in machine vision, since natural scenes usually contain millions of bits of information and neuron encoding is inevitable for a fast response in human vision system. The area of computer vision and media computing in computer science department consists of nine faculty members who cover all the areas of computer vision, computer graphics, image/video coding and transmission, and image/video processing.

Project fundings. This area has been funded by the National Basic Research Program of China, the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China, the Natural Science Foundation of China, and international cooperation research programs. In particular, we are leading a project of the National Basic Research Program “Intelligent Processing of Visual Media” which is funded about RMB 24M (the first term 2006~2010) and RMB 30M (the second term 2010~2015), and a key project of NSFC “Theories and Methodologies for Web Social Network Analysis” which is co-funded by NSFC and Microsoft.

Research performance. We have published a number of high-quality papers in foremost peer-reviewed international journals and the top international conferences, including ACM SIGGRAPH (4), CVPR oral (2), ICCV oral (1), IEEE T-PAMI (4), IEEE T-VCG (8), IEEE T-CSVT (1). Among them one paper was awarded as the IEEE T-CSVT Best Paper in 2010, and one was awarded as the CVPR Best Student Paper in 2007. We have also more than 20 patents authorized in China.

Postgraduate research. In this area, many outstanding postgraduates have been trained and a number of high-level awards had been achieved, including one National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award, two CCF (China Computer Federation) Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Awards, and one Beijing Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award. One female master student received the CVPR Best Student Paper Award in 2007, and one female PhD student received the IEEE T-CSVT Best Paper Award in 2010.

Academic service. The faculty members devoted good academic services to the research community, e.g. serving as the chair/co-chair, editor-in-chief or associate editor of various high-level international conferences/journals and organizations. In particular, Prof. Shi-Min Hu is on the editorial board of Computer Aided Design, and elected as the chair of executive committee of ACM Solid Modeling Association in 2011-2012.