Research Assistant: Tropical Wood Identification using Deep Learning

Research Assistant (RA):
Tropical Wood Identification using Deep Learning

Number of Vacancies: 1 or 2

Available at 

Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science,
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) KL Campus,
Jalan Genting Klang, 53300 Kuala Lumpur

Project Title

Tropical Wood Identification using Deep Learning

Project Leader

Dr. Tay Yong Haur (tayyh@utar.edu.my),
Department of Internet Engineering and Computer Science,
Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science (LKCFES),
UTAR KL Campus.

Objective

Identification of wood species based on its anatomy is critical to possibly trace the origin of the wood and hence reduce wood smuggling and illegal logging. Automated process in identification of wood species will create a vast applications from this capability.

In this research, we will look into applying deep learning and convolution neural networks, as the fundamental components in this wood identification system. We aim to devise a novel method to create a platform for applying machine learning in solving the very challenging and exciting research frontiers.

Scope of Work

• To review the recent work in vision-based wood species identification
• To devise and enhance deep learning model for textural feature extraction recognition
• To assess the performance of the model
• To create a proof-of-concept prototype of a wood species identification system

Job Description

• Remuneration of RM1500-2500 per month for 12 to 18 months, depending on experience.
• The RA must help the project leader in all works associated with the research.
• The RA must work closely with the sponsored industry partner to complete the research project.
• The RA may register for Master's degree by research or PhD program with UTAR.

Requirements

• Passionate in computer programming
• Have good mathematical foundations
• Strong interest and/or has working experience in machine learning/artificial intelligence/computer vision/image processing projects.
• Good English written and verbal communication
• Good analytical skills
• Self-motivated, requires minimal supervision, resourceful and willing to learn.
• Available to start working preferably on 1 Jan 2015.

Interested Candidate

If you are interested in the RA position advertised above, please email your CV directly to Dr. Tay Yong Haur (tayyh@utar.edu.my) as soon as possible. Feel free to write to Dr Tay for any further inquiry of the project.

Only short-listed candidates will be called for interview.

CCIS Talk: Science for Truth-seeking or Sustainability by Jay Kishigami

You are cordially invited to attend the following CCIS Talk:

Date: 25 November 2014 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Venue: DK1, LKCFES, UTAR KL Campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.

Title: Science for Truth-seeking or Sustainability

Abstract:
This talk is to discuss the emerging technology for the sustainable life for human being. These 60 years was a ICT era which started in 1946. The transistor was born in that year. We have been enjoying ICT on every industry and life. If the Kondracheff wave still has a power to predict the future, the new technology which will be base for the next 60 years is now inventing. For a long time, Science should be the academia which seeks the truth. But we may change this attitude and facing the critical condition in terms of sustainability of ourselves. The deep learning, singularity, robotics, data science, new paradigm of the internet and the collaboration between physics and statistics will be presented during the talk.

Speaker: Prof Jay Kishigami, Muroran Institute of Technology

Biography:

Professor Jay Kishigami is currently a professor at Division of Information and Electronic Engineering, Muroran Institute of Technology.

He was also the former Professor at Faculty of Engineering and Science, UTAR and Interfaculty Initiative of Information Studies, University of Tokyo from 2007 to 2013.

Prof Jay previously served as the Visiting Professor and Adjunct Professor at various universities, namely Kochi University of Technology, Rikkyo University and Muroran Institute of Technology.

Prof Jay's past working experience includes working for Cyber Solution Laboratories as the Executive Director, Vice President at New Business Promotion Group and Chief Producer at Content Distribution and IPTV.

Recently, he was selected as one of nine advisory board in W3C in June 2014.

CCIS Talk: Emerging IT Threats by Goh Su Gim

You are cordially invited to attend the following CCIS Talk:

Date: 31 Oct 2014 (Friday)
Time: 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Venue: IDK7, UTAR Perak Campus, Kampar, Perak

Title: Emerging IT Threats

Abstract:
This talk is to encourage students to think about security issues and to deploy security mechanism early in designing software application or in making purchase decision for computer hardware and software. Besides updating IT Professionals in security, this talk aims to create security-savvy computer users who will have a clear understanding of the security ramifications of using computers and Internet in their daily life. Motivates by rents debates on IT security threats, this talk will discuss potential individual privacy threats, which may arise from inappropriate use of computer security technology.

Speaker: Mr Goh Su Gim, F-Secure Corporation (M) Sdn Bhd

Biography:

Mr. Goh Su Gim is a Security Advisor who represents F-Secure in the Asia Pacific region, where he is actively involved in activities that raise public awareness of the IT threat landscape. He can be found giving talks in conferences, and acting as a liaison between the public and the local F-Secure office in Kuala Lumpur. He stays on top of the latest IT security related news, blogs about the latest threats and attacks or interesting findings from the F-Secure Labs, and provides advisories to the general public and media should there be any virus outbreak.

Su Gim’s past 15 years of IT security experience includes working for several companies in the USA in the area of IT system integration, IT security consulting (network and systems design), penetration testing and assessment, and working at a 24/7 security operations center. Prior to returning to Malaysia, he lived in Hawaii, USA, for 12 years. During his free time, he enjoys playing badminton, jungle trekking, camping and photography.

CCIS Talk: Convolutional neural networks for gender recognition by Ng Choon Boon

You are cordially invited to attend the following CCIS Talk:

Date: 30 Oct 2014 (Thursday)
Time: 10.30am - 11.30am
Venue: Meeting room, Mimos Lab, SB Ground Floor, FES, UTAR Kuala Lumpur Campus.

Title: Convolutional neural networks for gender recognition

Abstract:
Most computer vision methods relies heavily on hand-crafted features such as SIFT, LBP and HOG. Recently, deep learning methods, characterized by neural network architectures with many hidden layers, have become popular. In this paradigm, discriminative features are learnt by the network, thus enable it adapt to a different problem domain. The availability of parallel computing power at reasonable cost in the form of consumer graphical processing units has resulted in a resurgence of interest in such neural networks, as large architectures can now be trained on datasets consisting of many thousands of images. In particular, deep convolutional neural networks has achieved state-of-the-art results in tasks such as traffic sign classification, large scale object recognition, pedestrian detection and action recognition. In this project, we study convolutional neural networks for the problem of gender classification.

Speaker: Ng Choon Boon, Lecturer, UTAR.

Biography:

Ng Choon Boon is a lecturer with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. He earned his Master of Computer Science and Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degrees from the University of Malaya. At the present, he teaches undergraduate subjects in the field of electronics and communications. His research area of interest is in computer vision. He is currently pursuing his PhD in UTAR in the topic of human gender recognition.

CCIS Talk: Top 5 tips for aspiring technopreneurs & building e-commerce business by CK Wong

You are cordially invited to attend the following talk:

Date: 4th November 2014 (Tuesday)
Time: 1.00PM - 3.00PM
Venue: DK1, FES, UTAR Kuala Lumpur Campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.
Title:Top 5 tips for aspiring technopreneurs & building e-commerce business
Abstract:
Start working for some one first
- Read, read, read
- Find your niche & passion
- Partner & team
- Numbers & revenue
- Start with passion & determination
- Build a niche, master product sourcing
- Grow traffic & sales with numbers
- Understand what customer needs
- Build a brand that lasts
Speaker: CK Wong a.k.a @ckaywong
Biography:

CK Wong a.k.a @ckaywong is the co-founder of ecommercemilo.com - an online content site with focus on e-commerce insights in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. It is equipped with professional know-how, data-driven, in depth content written by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs or anyone who is interested in e-commerce topics.

He has also founded silvermouseasia.com - an e-commerce enabler that supports merchants from small & medium businesses to big brands on their e-commerce and digital marketing campaigns. The service offering ranges from webstore setup, digital marketing, fulfillment to conversion, or anything e-commerce.

CK was a columnist in local newspaper writing on e-commerce trends and regularly shares his analysis on e-commerce via local media. He has just authored a book titled "E-Commerce Success Stories Vol. 1" with MPH publishing, featuring 10 local e-commerce entrepreneurs on their journey to success. (The book is scheduled to be launched in local bookstores by October 2014)

Prior to that, CK has 10 years of experience providing e-commerce IT and consultancy services to retailers, including a 2 years stint heading marketing activities of Rakuten Malaysia since their setup here in 2012.

Contact: Too Chien Wen (toocw@utar.edu.my)

CCIS Talk: Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer by Vince Kek

You are cordially invited to attend the following talk:

Date: 17 October 2014 (Friday)
Time: 2.30pm - 3.30pm
Venue: DK1, FES, UTAR Kuala Lumpur campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.
Title: Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer
Abstract:
“Dreams do not come true just because you dream them — it’s hard work that makes things happen… Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer.”
Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just do.

Speaker: Vince Kek, One Ping Sdn. Bhd

Biography:

Computer Technology is by far one of the fastest growing industries in the world and nobody knows it better than master programmer Vince Kek. Graduated from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) with a Degree in Computer Science and a Master’s in Information Systems, he valiantly learnt everything there was to know about mobile apps, web systems and server implementation across all operating systems. After proving his worth in an I.T company and becoming its vice president at an impressive rate, he decided that it was time to make his dreams into reality.

One Ping Sdn. Bhd. was established with the values of morality, quality and commitment, and with a vision of connecting people through the unification of web and mobile applications. The company soon caught the eyes of many stakeholders because of its rapid expansion as most customers were attracted to the company’s quick and comprehensive spectrum of services which include consultation, design, development, hosting, submitting, marketing, optimising and after-sales support for all web and mobile application needs.

CCIS Talk: A Study on HMAX by Francis Lau

You are cordially invited to attend the following CCIS Talk:

Date: 16 Oct 2014 (Thursday)
Time: 10.30am - 11.30am
Venue: Meeting room, Mimos Lab, SB Ground Floor, FES, UTAR Kuala Lumpur Campus.
Title: A study on HMAX
Abstract:
This talk covers some popular ANN architectures, starting from the basic 3-layer backpropagation network to the more recently popular deep architectures, which include the convolutional network and HMAX. The author will share the details of his HMAX study and describe the latest sparse coding addition to the existing model, which gave a drastic improvement on the challenging Caltech-101 benchmark. He will end his talk with a discussion on which future direction to take: deep or broad. This talk is suitable for image processing and ANN researchers, or anyone interested in brain intelligence.

Speaker: Francis Lau Kean Hong, Lecturer, UTAR.
Biography:
Francis Lau graduated from Monash University with double degrees of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer System Engineering (Hons) in 1993 and 1995 respectively. He holds a Master degree in Engineering specializing in range (2.5D) image processing. His career involves image inspection, banking and online systems, and taught at UTAR in the Electrical & Electronics Department since 2007. He is currently doing a PhD research project at UTAR on the topic of artificial neural network (ANN) in visual object recognition.

E-Genting Programming Competition 2014 Briefing and Q&A Session

Dear all,

We are arranging a Briefing and Q&A Session by the relevant personnel from E-Genting Sdn. Bhd. for the upcoming E-Genting Programming Competition 2014. You are most welcome to participate in this event:

Date: 14 October 2014 (Tuesday)
Time: 11AM - 12.30PM
Venue: SB208, FES, UTAR Kuala Lumpur Campus.
Speakers: Mr Lim Fang Yin and Mr Fun Mun Pieng, eGenting Sdn. Bhd.
URL: https://www.facebook.com/events/1392524821037626

CCIS Talk: Opportunities and challenges to leverage the cloud to carry out Knowledge Work by Eric Tsui

You are cordially invited to the following CCIS Talks:

Date: 17th September 2014 (Wednesday)
Time: 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Venue: Gallery, Faculty of Creative Industries, UTAR PJ Campus, Section 13, Petaling Jaya.

Title: Opportunities and challenges to leverage the cloud to carry out Knowledge Work

Abstract:
Cloud computing is increasingly being adopted by large organizations as well as Small to Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) today. However, up to now, the use of the cloud by businesses tends to be almost entirely on IT services and software applications with a drive for cost savings, productivity enhancements and standardization in control. In fact, at the forefront of cloud development, the cloud is increasingly unfolded as a disruptive force fuelling business innovations. This talk will highlight how to use the cloud to support knowledge-intensive business activities. In particular, the speaker will elaborate on the opportunities and impact by big data and showcase how to leverage the cloud for learning, open innovation, expertise location and human-machine co-operative problem solving. Challenges for breeding the next generation of knowledge workers will also be outlined.

Speaker: Professor Eric Tsui, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HK

Biography:

Professor of Knowledge Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Prof. Tsui is the program leader of Asia’s only master degree in Knowledge Management which is delivered in a blended learning environment. In the past 9 years, he has designed and delivered numerous public and custom-designed knowledge management, Social Media, Cloud Computing, E-Learning, Business Process Management and Service Innovation workshops.
He has also received more than HK$2.5m of funding for E-Learning projects in the last 4 years and consulted for many government departments and private organizations in Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei.
He was a recipient of the High Impact Award 2008, winner and finalist of Teaching and Learning Innovation Award 2010 and 2009, as well as Faculty’s Outstanding Award in Teaching Excellence in 2013, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In 2014, he was awarded the Knowledge Management Leadership Award in the Asia Educational Excellence track by CMO Asia.

CCIS Talk on Software that Enables Urban Mobility and Safety by Tan Xian Yi

You are cordially invited to attend the following CCIS Talk:

Date: 19th August 2014 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:00PM – 1:30 PM
Venue: SE108, UTAR Kuala Lumpur Campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.

Title: Software that Enables Urban Mobility and Safety

Abstract:
With the ever-growing population in major cities all over the world, urban mobility and safety is the utmost important element in determining the competitiveness of a city. The key component in providing better urban mobility and safety is non other than software systems.
In this talk, the speaker will introduce the software systems running behind the scene in city councils, highways, railways and public transportation operators.
He will also share his experience in this industry, the challenges and the opportunities of applying the latest technologies to this industry.

Speaker: Tan Xian Yi, Manager (Software), Recogine Technology

Biography:

Mr Tan Xian Yi graduated from UTAR in 2005. He has 9 years of experience in smart city related projects.
Having working experience as R&D Engineer, Software Engineer, System Engineer, System Architect, and now Software Manager, Mr Tan has delivered more than 20 projects, ranging from building security, expressway monitoring and control, railway communication, tunnel monitoring and control, and ICT infrastructure.

CCIS Talk: In-Vehicle Communication by SungKwon Park

You are cordially invited to the following CCIS Talks:

Date: 14th August 2014 (Thursday)
Time: 1:30PM – 3:00 PM
Venue: SA 6th Floor West Meeting Room, UTAR Kuala Lumpur Campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.


Date: 18th August 2014 (Monday)
Time: 3:30PM – 05:00 PM
Venue: N010, FICT, UTAR Perak Campus, Kampar.

Title: In-Vehicle Network

Abstract:Recently, electric cars are beginning to be commercially sold worldwide. At the same time, the smart grids for intelligent electric energy distribution encompassing solar and wind power generators are beginning to be deployed. In addition, so many infotainment devices such as monitors, cameras, sensors, and radars are beginning to be installed in a vehicle. This creates strong demand for a broad band vehicle network (IVN). In addition, Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communications are gaining attraction because they are proven to minimize accidents. Now these devices in cars need to communicate each other and also with devices in other cars through the smart grid infrastructure and wirelessly. In this lecture, those will be discussed with more detail and IVN technologies will be introduced with more depth.

Speaker: Professor Sungkwon Park, Hanyang University

Biography:

Prof. SungKwon Park is currently Full Professor at Hanyang University and. He joined Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN, USA as Assistant Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering, upon his graduation from RPI in 1987. In 1990, he received an Initiation Award from US National Science Foundation. He left Tennessee Tech in 1993 as Tenured Associate Professor to join Hanyang University.
His publication include 7 authored books and over 200 refereed technical papers in the areas of VoD, IPTV, data communications, CATV multimedia System, image processing, and digital communication systems. He holds over 40 domestic and international patents. He is a senior member of IEEE, a member of the IEICE, a life member of Korean Information and Communications Society.
He is a member of the Advisory Committee, Korea Communications Commission since 2013 and the Operating Committee Chairman for Smart Work Forum since 2010. He is also the Chairman of the Department of Electronic Engineering in Hanyang University since 2013.

CCIS Talk: Seismic Imaging in Oil and Gas Exploration by Deva Ghosh

You are cordially invited to the following CCIS Talk:

Date: 8th August 2014 (Friday)
Time: 11:00AM – 12:30PM
Venue: P107, FICT, UTAR Kampar Campus, Perak.
Title: Introduction to Seismic Imaging in Oil and Gas Exploration
Abstract:
Global oil and gas industry has a bright future even in the backdrop of uncertainty and volatility in the market. There is everlasting need of energy demand in the light of prosperity and industrialism. The oil and gas follows a Petroleum System where the oil is generated from organic matter, migrates to the structure where is trapped inside a reservoir. Seismic imaging is the most important and crucial step in recovering the geology with hydrocarbon (See Fig 1) from the seismic response.

This talk deals with generating a wave that is send and interacts with the geology to produce a response. This response is recorded by detectors on the surface. Seismic wave propagation is then imaged to produce a structural profile that could be visualized in 3D.
Speaker: Prof. Deva Ghosh, Universiti Teknologi Petronas
Biography:

Deva Ghosh obtained his Ph.D. (1970) from Delft University, the Netherlands. He worked at Banaras Hindu University as Associate Professor in Geophysics for about 8 years. He worked in Shell from 1974-1999 holding various technological and management positions. He later joined PETRONAS in 2000 and was responsible for research, development, and application of geophysical technology worldwide.
In 2011, he joined the University wing of PETRONAS (UTP) as Professor in Geophysics and currently responsible as Head of Center of excellence in Subsurface Seismic Imaging & Hydrocarbon Prediction (CSI). He is passionate about geophysics, about developing local staff, and transfer of technology. His field of Interest is in Seismic Imaging, Seismic Attributes and Hydrocarbon prediction. He is a member of AAPG, SPE, EAGE and SEG, and a former editor of EAGE. He was SEG-Shell Distinguished Lecturer for SE Asia in 2010 & EAGE Lecturer 2012.

CCIS Talk: Software Development as a Career: Is it a Right Choice? by Derek Chan

You are cordially invited to the following CCIS Talk:
Date: 8th July 2014 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:00PM – 01:30 PM
Venue: SE108, UTAR Kuala Lumpur campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.
Title: Software Development as a Career: Is it a Right Choice?
Abstract:
You have always had some sort of interest in software development and programming. But is this the right path moving forward? Would your future be bright in the industry? What are software development companies looking for in a graduate? All these would be answered in this talk.
Speaker: Derek Chan, Tech Lead, Ezypay Pte Ltd.
Biography:

Derek Chan graduated from UTAR with a B. CompSc (Hons) and M. CompSc in 2006 and 2008.
UTAR has sparked his interest in software development during his undergraduate years and he is currently a Technical Lead for the Level 3 Support and Pre-Sales team at Ezypay Pte Ltd.
Ezypay is Australia's largest direct debit service provider and has a R&D centre in KL to develop payments and membership systems in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore & Malaysia.

UST-UTAR Summer Workshop 2014 - ICT Track

In collaboration with University Systems Taiwan (UST), UTAR is organizing a two-day Summer Workshop 2014 - ICT Track:

Date: 23-24 July 2014
Time: 9AM - 5PM
Venue: UTAR Kuala Lumpur campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.
Workshop Description:
Since the introduction of "Smart Dust" in 2000, we have witnessed wireless sensor networks bringing conveniences to our lives. Many applications nowadays make use of sensor readings remotely to add value to their services. The amount of applications will only increase with the next generation of wireless standard which is expected to include support for machine-to-machine (M2M) transmission. The exponential growth of devices will pose a serious challenge to current wireless infrastructure. The aim of this training program is to provide knowledge about 1) transmission and networking, and 2) "sensor computing", which will enable efficient M2M communications. The first part will include an exposition on signal processing techniques to facilitate heterogeneous network transmission. The second part covers two inexpensive, and famous sensor computing platforms. The first one is Arduino, which has commonly been used to design simple robots. The second one is Kinect, which has been widely seen for interactive game developments. Additional hands-on projects will be provided to students besides the introduction of programming on the two platforms.
Topics:

• Arduino-based Remote Robot-Car
• Wearable Computing with Arduino
• Game Programming using Unity
• Robust Transmission for Heterogeneous Networks
• Motion Controlled Interactive Game

Speakers:

Prof. Dr. Carrson C. Fung, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Prof. Dr. Carrson C. Fung received his B.S. degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, in 1994, M.S. degree from Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA, in 1996 and Ph.D. degree from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2005, all in electrical engineering. He was the recipient of the prestigious Sir Edward Youde Ph.D. Fellowship in 2001-2002. He has also been a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T and Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ, USA, from 1994-1999, where he worked on video and audio coding. He was also a Researcher at the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) in 2005, where he worked on MIMO-OFDM systems and a Senior DSP Engineer at Sennheiser Research Lab in Palo Alto, CA, USA, in 2006, where he worked on microphone and microphone array technologies. He has, since 2006, been an Assistant Professor with the National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. His research interest is in the area of signal processing for communications.

Prof. Dr. Min-Te Sun, National Central University, Taiwan

Prof. Dr. Min-Te Sun received his B.S. degree in Mathematics from National Taiwan University in 1991, the M.S. degree in Computer Science from Indiana University, Bloomington in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer and Information Science from the Ohio State University in 2002. He was an Assistant Professor at Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Auburn University, AL, USA between 2002 and 2008. Since 2008, he has been with the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Central University, Taiwan, where he is currently an Associate Professor and the Associate Chair. His research interests include distributed algorithms, wireless networks, security, and data management.

Prof. Dr. Shih-Ching Yeh, National Central University, Taiwan

Prof. Dr. Shih-Ching Yeh received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC) in 2004 and 2008 respectively. He served as a Computer Scientist at the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC from 2008 to 2009. Since fall 2009, he has joined National Central University and served as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering. He was the recipient of the Best Paper Award at the 15th Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education (2011), the Best Paper Award at the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (2011), and the Best Paper Award at the 2014 International Conference on Mechanical, Electronics and Computer Engineering. He has been the program chair of the 2013 International Workshop on Virtual Reality for Medical Applications. His research interests emphasize employing interactive technologies, virtual reality and biomed-sensing technologies in interdisciplinary research areas such as neuromotor rehabilitation, cognitive training, surgical simulation, digital learning and psychiatric-mental treatments, and utilizing computational intelligence to construct data-driven diagnosis or assessment methods in clinics.

Assist. Prof. Dr. Poh Kit Chong, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

Assist. Prof. Dr. Poh Kit Chong received his B. Eng. degree in electronics from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia in 2001, his M.Eng.Sc.degree from Multimedia University (MMU), Malaysia in 2003, and his Ph.D. degree in information and communications engineering from KAIST, Korea in 2010. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia. Prior to this he worked at Intel, Motorola Solutions, and MIMOS Berhad, holding a final position as a Senior Staff Engineer prior to returning to academia. His current research interests include wireless channel measurement & modelling, communication protocols, and embedded and distributed computing systems. Dr. Chong is also a member of IEEE Computer and Communications societies, and the Board of Engineers Malaysia. He serves as a reviewer for international journals and conferences.

Assist. Prof. Dr. Victor Tan, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

Assist. Prof. Dr. Victor Tan is an assistant professor in the Department of Internet Engineering and Computer Science in the Faculty of Engineering and Science, UTAR. His research interests are in the broad areas of distributed computing and software development. He teaches a broad range of subjects in the software engineering degree programme at UTAR, including game programming using the Unity platform. Prior to this, he worked as a research fellow at the University of Southampton, UK on a research collaboration with IBM UK on implementing provenance in distributed systems.
Fees: RM150 (UTAR students), RM300 (others)
Registration: www.utar.edu.my/cee/ustutar

CCIS Talk: AI Applications in the Industry by Raymond Soo

You are cordially invited to the following CCIS Talk:

Date: 27 June 2014 (Friday)

Time: 11.45am - 12.30pm 

Venue: SE111, UTAR Kuala Lumpur campus, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.

Title: Artificial Intelligence Applications in the Industry

Abstract:

Raymond will be sharing briefly on his personal experience implementing A.I. algorithms in industry. The objective of this talk is to give participants insight on how A.I. is applied in industry and how it saves costs for large corporations. Participants will also hear how equipping themselves with A.I. skills can play an important role in their technical career growth.

Speaker: Raymond K.Y. Soo, Quintiq Sdn. Bhd.

Biography:

A pioneer graduant from UTAR (2005, Degree in Computer Science, 1st class honors), Raymond Soo received multiple recognition awards during 3 years with the Analytical Solutions Development Team at Intel Technology Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. He is currently an Algorithm/Optimization Expert in Quintiq Sdn. Bhd. with clients such as TNT, Walmart, Itella, and HDNL.

CCIS Workshop on Neural Networks and its Applications

CCIS will be organizing a short workshop on Neural Networks and its Applications on 29 May 2014.
Below are the details of the workshop:

Title: Neural Networks and its Applications
Speaker: Tay Yong Haur
Date: 29 May 2014
Time: 2pm-4pm.
Venue: MIMOS Lab, SB Ground Floor, FES, UTAR Kuala Lumpur campus.
Registration: due to the limited space available, it is only opened to UTAR students and staffs. please write directly to tayyh@utar.edu.my

CCIS Industry Showcase: Intelligent Video Analytic for Intelligent Transportation Systems by Recogine Technology

CCIS Industry Showcase invites our industry partners to showcase their latest R&D technologies and to foster further collaboration between academic and industry.

Title: Intelligent Video Analytic for Intelligent Transportation Systems
Company: Recogine Technology Sdn. Bhd.
Date: 29 May 2014 (Thursday)
Time: 09:30AM – 12:30PM
Venue: MIMOS Lab, SB Ground Floor, FES, UTAR Kuala Lumpur

In this industry showcase, we invite all undergraduate and graduating students, researchers and lecturers to this event, to interact with the researchers from Recogine Technology for possible collaborations:

• FYP Projects in video analytic and intelligent transportation systems (ITS)
• Internship opportunities
• Postgraduate Research in video analytic and ITS
• Research consultancy and collaboration

Activities:

• Demonstration of video analytic technologies in ITS
• Research opportunities with Recogine Technology

Who should attend?

• undergraduate students, 
• postgraduate students, 
• researchers, 
• academics

CUDA Programming Challenge 2014

Join the CUDA Programming Challenge 2014 to win USD1000 + NVidia Quadro GPU card!

QUESTION 
The CUDA Programming Challenge 2014 is a coding competition that welcomes all types of CUDA programs to solve a shortest path route selection problem. The problem of finding a path between two vertices or nodes, such that the sum of the weights of all the edges in between is minimized, is a problem that can be solved in polynomial time, but involves a huge amount of computation. The algorithms used to solve this problem can be applied to real-world applications such as finding the shortest routes between two points such as it is done in Google Maps or Waze, and in networking where packets are often routed through the shortest paths to minimize delays. The goal of this year’s challenge is to develop an algorithm to find the shortest path is the least amount of time.

TIMELINE 
May 2014: Sample data sets availability
Sept 15, 2014: Judging and presentation
Oct 2014: Prize giving

REGISTRATION
Registration is free at http://gpu.mimos.my/CUDAcontest.html

 

Mining Big Data: A How-to

In conjunction with the world-wide Big Data Week 2014, UTAR is proud to organize the following event:

Event: Mining Big Data: A How-to
Organizer: FICT, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
Date: 8 May 2014
Time: 10:00AM to 5:00PM
Venue: UTAR Perak campus, Kampar, Perak. (GPS Location: 4.336734, 101.140720) (Free return bus UTAR KL <-> UTAR Perak is available)
Admission: Free, registration here
Details: here

Agenda:

Invited Talk #1: 

How to detect community in Social Networks by Hon Wai Leong, National University of Singapore

Workshop #1:

Hyperlinking video for large video collections by Chong-Wah Ngo, City University of Hong Kong

Workshop #2:

Mining Data Association by Shuai Cheng Li, City University of Hong Kong

Invited Talk #2:

Integrating Data Mining in Business Process by Venkat Narayanan, Singapore Management University and BigTapp Pte Ltd

Workshop #3:

Machine learning for Big Data Analysis by Cheng Wai Kheng, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

UTAR Entrepreneurial Talk Series: Dr. Ngau Boon Keat, Dialog Berhad

Department of Consultancy & Commercialisation (DCC) is pleased to invite everyone to attend the "Entrepreneurial Talk Series" by Dr. Ngau Boon Keat, Executive Chairman of Dialog Berhad.

Details of the talk are as follows:

Date : 14 April 2014 (Monday)
Venue : Auditorium (A003), UTAR Perak Campus, Kampar.
Time : 10.30am to 12.30pm
Speaker : Dr. Ngau Boon Keat, Executive Chairman of Dialog Berhad.
Admission: Free

Speaker's Biography
Dr. Ngau Boon Kear is the Executive Chairman of Dialog Berhad, a company involved in the petroleum and petrochemical industry, both upstream and downstream. He co-founded the company in 1984 with four employees and grew it into a listed company in 1996.

He began his career in 1972 as a Refinery Engineer with Mobil Singapore Pte Ltd. He worded at PETRONAS from 1975 to 1980 where he held various positions from Production Engineer to Engineering Manager. He has more than 41 years of working experience in both upstream and downstream of the oil, gas and petrochemical industry.

He holds a Bachelor Degree (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering and an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He is a member of the Institute of Engineers, Malaysia and the Institution of Engineers, Singapore. He is also a Registered Professional Engineer with the Board of Engineers, Malaysia.

Under Dr. Ngau's leadership, Dialog's business has diversified across the value chain, offering integrated specialist technical services. Dr Ngau was named the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year (EOY) 2013 Malaysia at gala event officiated by the Minister of Youth and Sports, YB Khairy Jamaluddin.

Dr. Ngau and his wife are also the founders of the MyKasih Foundation that provides food aid, training and student bursary programmes to families to help them break the cycle of poverty.

Admission is Free (UTAR students qualify for USSDC points)

For information and registration, please contact Vincent/Ronnie/Ching of DCC. Tel: 03-79582628, extension 8255 (Ronnie) or 7127 (Vincent/Ching). Further enquiries please mail to dcc@utar.edu.my

Research Assistant: Vision-based Human Activity Recognition using Deep Learning

Research Assistant (RA):
Vision-based Human Activity Recognition using Deep Learning

Number of Vacancies: 2

Available at 

Faculty of Engineering and Science,
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) KL Campus,
Jalan Genting Klang, 53300 Kuala Lumpur

Project Title

Vision-based Human Activity Recognition using Deep Learning

Project Leader

Dr. Tay Yong Haur (tayyh@utar.edu.my),
Department of Internet Engineering and Computer Science,
Faculty of Engineering and Science (FES), UTAR KL Campus.

Objective

Automated vision-based human activity recognition is one of the most active computer vision research topics. It has immense real-world applications, especially in security surveillance. Success implementation of this technology would lead to substantial improvement of public safety and security.

In this research, we will look into utilizing deep learning and convolution neural networks, and enhance it to model temporal information, as the fundamental components in this vision-based human recognition. We aim to devise a novel method to create a platform for applying machine learning in solving the very challenging vision-based human activity recognition.

Scope of Work

• To review the recent work in vision-based human activity recognition
• To devise and enhance deep learning model with temporal information
• To assess the performance of the model
• To create a proof-of-concept prototype of a human activity recognition applications

Job Description

• Remuneration of RM1500-2500 per month for 12 to 18 months, depending on experience.
• The RA must help the project leader in all works associated with the research.
• The RA must work closely with the sponsored industry partner to complete the research project.
• The RA may register for Master's degree by research or PhD program with UTAR.

Requirements

• Passionate in computer programming
• Have good mathematical foundations
• Strong interest and/or has working experience in machine learning/artificial intelligence/computer vision/image procession projects.
• Good English written and verbal communication
• Good analytical skills
• Self-motivated, requires minimal supervision, resourceful and willing to learn.
• Available to start working preferably on 1 May 2014.

Interested Candidate

If you are interested in the RA position advertised above, please email your CV directly to Dr. Tay Yong Haur (tayyh@utar.edu.my) as soon as possible. Feel free to write to Dr Tay for any further inquiry of the project.

Only short-listed candidates will be called for interview.

CCIS Industry Showcase: Video Analytics from MIMOS Berhad

CCIS Industry Showcase invites our industry partners to showcase their latest R&D technologies, to foster further collaboration between academic and industry.

Date: 3 April 2014 (Thursday) 

Time: 09:30AM – 12:30 PM
Venue: MIMOS Lab, SB Ground Floor, FES, Kuala Lumpur

In this industry showcase, we invite all undergraduate and graduating students, researchers and lecturers to this event, to interact with the researchers from MIMOS Berhad for possible collaborations:

• FYP Projects in video analytics; 
• Part-time research helpers; 
• Postgraduate Research in Video Analytics; 
• Research consultancy and collaboration with MIMOS-UTAR.

Activities:

• Introduction of video analytic technologies 
• Demonstration of video analytics technology of MIMOS 
• Introduction of MIMOS UTAR CoE 
• Research opportunities with MIMOS UTAR CoE

Who should attend?

• undergraduate students, 
• postgraduate students, 
• researchers, 
• academics

Free Python Conference Kuala Lumpur 2014

Event: Free Python Conference Kuala Lumpur 2014
Venue: University Malaya, Wisma R&D
Date:
      31 March 2pm-5pm
                  OR
       4 April 2014 2pm-5pm
Details: http://pycademy.net/pycons