Visual Information Processing

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Professor Kai-Kuang Ma received the B.E. degree from Chung Yuan Christian University (Taiwan), M.S. degree from Duke University, and the Ph.D. degree from North Carolina State University, U.S.A. He is a Professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was with the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), Singapore and IBM Corporation, U.S.A. His research interests are in the areas of digital image processing and computer vision, including digital image/video coding and standards, interpolation and super-resolution, image denoising and enhancement, and image understanding and scene analysis. Prof. Ma has produced extensive publications in various international journals, conferences, and MPEG standardization meetings. He holds one USA patent on fast motion estimation algorithm. He is an IEEE Fellow, in recognition of his contributions on Image Processing and Digital Video Coding Technologies. He is a Distinguished Lecturer in the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (2008-2009).

As the Principal Investigator of multiple funded projects on visual information processing (including Singapore defense and DARPA, USA), the first and most distinctive contribution from Prof. Ma's lab lie in the encoding optimization for the MPEG video coding standards. In particular, two fast motion estimation algorithms, called Diamond Search and MVFAST, were invented and eventually adopted by MPEG standards in 1999 and 2000, respectively, after a series of thorough MPEG core experiments. These works have been incorporated into MPEG's reference software, benefitting research and development community in this area as well as yielding high number of citations in publication.

ekkma@ntu.edu.sg