ICSI Gazette, Summer 2013

Reflections
by Roberto Pieraccini, CEO

Of the many words that characterize the last few years of technical innovation, three stand out: “big,” as in big data; “many,” as in the use of many people to help make sense of big data; and “deep,” as in deep learning. What is big about big data is the notion that, in an unprecedented way, we have access to amounts of data so large that we are facing not only new and seemingly insurmountable problems, but also great, or rather big, new opportunities for a deeper understanding of the phenomena represented by data. Read more.

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from ICSI in the Press

“Nowhere to Hide: Video Location Tech Has Arrived,” February 21, 2013, Tech’s Bottom Line, InfoWorld, Bill Snyder.

“Researchers Find Way to Pinpoint Where Online Video Was Shot,” February 19, 2013, Consumer Tech Radar, CIO Blogs, Bill Snyder.

“An Interactive Graph of the Certificate Authority Ecosystem,” December 14, 2012, Slashdot.

“Free Public Database Access Encourages New Applications, Abuses,” November 21, 2012, CBS5, Alan Martin.

“Rogue Pharma, Fake AV Vendors Feel Credit Card Crunch,” October 18, 2012, Krebs on Security, Brian Krebs.

“Promises and Promises,” October 11, 2012, Nelson Morgan, contributed article, Speech Technology.

“Colleges Receive $10 Million Grant to Study Cyber Crime,” September 28, 2012, U.S. News University Connection, Catherine Groux.

“Cybercrime Project Receives $10 Million from NSF,” September 28, 2012, Daily Cal, Caroline Murphy.

“Exploring Cybercriminal Minds, Safeguarding Privacy Among $50M Worth of New NSF Research Projects,” September 27, 2012, Network World, Bob Brown.

“NSF Grant to Help Understand the World of Cybercrime,” September 27, 2012, DFI News.

“UC Berkeley Part of $10 Million NSF Study of ‘Human Element’ in Cybercrime,” September 25, 2012, San Francisco Business Times, Steven Brown.

“Berkeley Researchers May Track Twitter Users,” September 25, 2012, EETimes, Rick Merritt.

“Grant to Help Computer Scientists Understand the World of Cybercrime,” September 25, 2012, Phys.org.

Publications, October - March

New Research Group: Audio and Multimedia

ICSI has established a new research area, Audio and Multimedia, to focus on problems related to multimedia analysis and retrieval. Researchers in this area, led by Gerald Friedland, are working on ways to extract meaning automatically from the vast amounts of consumer-produced data available freely on Web sites like Flickr and YouTube – a dataset of billions of images and videos with few constraints on quality, size, and content. Videos are of particular interest to the group because they provide textual, audio, and visual information for analysis and are the fastest-growing type of content on the Internet. YouTube claims that 72 hours of video are uploaded to its Web site alone every minute.

Featured Researcher: Nelson Morgan

Morgan has led speech research at ICSI since the Institute’s inauguration in 1988. Morgan also served as director for thirteen years starting in 1999, the year the agreement that had established ICSI expired. Morgan volunteered for the challenge of broadening and stabilizing the Institute’s funding base and, by the end of his tenure, left the Institute in better financial condition than it had experienced in years. Morgan has always enjoyed a challenge.