SIGGRAPH 2004: The 31st International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

HKUST Makes Her Debut

SIGGRAPH is the most prestigious conference in the field of Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in the world. The conference will be held from August 8-12, 2004 in Los Angeles, California, USA this year.

Getting a research paper published in SIGGRAPH is the dream of every computer graphics graduate student. As far as we know, none of the local students from any tertiary institutions in Hong Kong has ever made their footprint in the conference. Two of our students has made their debut this year.

Mr. Yin Li and Mr. Jiaya Jia, PhD candidates of the Department of Computer Science, will publish their first (as well as the school's first) papers in the prestigious SIGGRAPH 2004. Both papers will go straight to the renowned ACM Transactions on Graphics.

Their works were completed in Microsoft Research Asia while they were student interns under the mentorship of Prof. Heung Yeung Shum. Mr. Li (a Microsoft Research Asia Fellow) and Mr. Jia are under the supervision of Prof. Chi Keung Tang. Both of them are supported by AoE/IT and RGC.

Mr. Li's "Lazy Snapping" is an interactive image cutout tool that separates coarse and fine scale processing, making object specification and detailed adjustment easily. Moreover, it provides instant visual feedback, snapping the cutout contour to the true object boundary efficiently despite the presence of ambiguous or low contrast edges.

Mr. Jia's "Poisson Matting" formulates the problem of natural matting as one of solving Poisson equations with the matte gradient field. By interactively manipulating this field using a number of filtering tools, the user can further improve Poisson matting results locally until he or she is satisfied.

SIGGRAPH is the annual conference organized by ACM SIGGRAPH, it provides graphic researchers, developers, creators, educators and practitioners with an opportunity to interact, exchange and share their expertise in the graphic world. The event is composed of a 5-day conference and 3-day exhibition. Every year, it attracts more than 20 thousand computer graphics professionals from all over the world to gather for a program focuses on research, art, animation, games, interactivity and web graphics.