U.S. Team

The U.S. Team to be funded by NSF includes Dr. Aidong Zhang, Dr. David Mark, Dr. Raj Acharya, and three graduate students.

Dr. Aidong Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at State University of New York at Buffalo. She received her Ph.D degree in Computer Science from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, in 1994. Her research interests include geographic information systems, distributed database systems, multimedia database systems, educational digital libraries, content­based image retrieval, and data mining. Dr. Zhang is an author of over 50 research publications in these areas. She has been collaborating with researchers at Xerox Corporation and National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) in designing a general purpose web­based multimedia data retrieval system. She is a member of National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) and has been actively collaborating with other NCGIA members to build various geographic image databases. She also serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Multimedia Tools and Applications, International Journal of Distributed and Parallel Databases, and ACM SIGMOD DiSC (Digital Symposium Collection). Dr. Zhang is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award.

David M. Mark received his PhD in Geography from Simon Fraser University (British Columbia) in 1977, and is currently Professor of Geography at the University at Buffalo. He has been a Research Scientist with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) since its inception, and has been Director of the Buffalo NCGIA site since 1995. Mark chaired the NCGIA’s Science Policy Committee from 1990 to 1993, and has been co­leader of three NCGIA research initiatives, most recently Initiative 21, “Formal Models of Common­Sense Geographic Worlds.” In the NCGIA’s Varenius project, Mark chairs the panel on cognitive models of geographic space, and is a member of the executive committee. David Mark has written or co­authored over 180 publications, including 70 refereed articles, 2 edited books, 19 book chapters, 60 conference proceedings articles, and 25 technical reports. He has made about 150 academic presentations, almost three­quarters at professional meetings, and the others as invited talks at univer­ sities and government agencies. In 1996 Mark was elected Vice­President of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), and was President for 1997­98. Mark has served on various conference program committees, including Vice­chair (1987­88) and Chair (1988­89) of the Geographic Information Systems Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. He has also served on various editorial boards, including Cartography and Geographic Information Systems (1990­present), Inter­ national Journal of Geographical Information Systems (1990­1995), and Annals, Association of American Geographers (1997­present). Mark’s research interests include spatial cognition, geographic information systems, cognitive linguistics, human­computer interaction, digital elevation models, and computer mapping.

Raj Acharya’s main research interests are in the general areas of Image processing, Multimedia Com­ puting and Visualization. He obtained his Ph.D from the University of Minnesota/Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in 1984. He worked with the Dynamic Spatial Reconstructor project at Mayo Clinic (1981­85). During 1984­1986, he was a research scientist at GE­CGR in Paris, France. He is currently Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at SUNY­Buffalo. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Com­ puterized Medical Imaging and Graphics. He was General Chair of SPIE Conference on Biomedical Image Processing (1992 and 1993). He was General Chair of 1994 SPIE International Conference on Physiology and Function from Multidimensional Images. He was also Cochair of 1994 IEEE Workshop in Biomedical Image Analysis. He was on the scientific board of the IEEE Model Based 3D Biomedical Image Analysis. He has published in the areas of Multimedia Networks, Multimedia Information Retrieval, Fractals, Image Processing and Visualization. His research work has been featured in Businessweek, 1996­Mathematics Calendar, The Scientist, Diagnostic Imaging and Biomedical Engineering Newsletter.

International Participants

The Japan team is from the R&D department of the National Center for Science Information Systems (NACSIS) lead by Professor Kinji Ono (see commitment letter attached) and the France team is lead by Dr. Martinez and Dr. Mouaddib (see commitment letter attached). The personnel time is distributed as follows: (1) Japan team: 3 persons/1999, 4 persons/2000, 3 persons/2001, (2) France team: 3 persons/1999, 3 persons/2000, 3 persons/2001. The financial support from the two teams is distributed as follows: $70,000/1999, $70,000/2000, $70,000/2001. The biographical sketches of some of the key members involved in the project are given below:

Frederic Andres received a M.S. from Grenoble University and a Ph.D from the University of Paris VI Computer science in 1989 and 1993 respectively. From 1995, he has been holding a visiting research position at the R&D department of the National Center for Science Information Systems (NACSIS). His research interests include database management, multimedia and hypermedia system, and media mining.  Dr. Andres leads the AHYDS (Active Hypermedia Delivery System) project. AHYDS is a customizable data delivery system using Phasme DBMS.

Asanobu Kitamoto graduated from the University of Tokyo in Electronic Engineering in 1992, where he also received a M.S. and a PhD degree in 1994 and 1997, respectively. From 1997, he has been in the Research and development Department, National Center for Science Information Systems (NACSIS) as Research Associate. His research interests include pattern recognition, content­based image database systems, remote sensing and computer graphics. He has been involved in the research of content­based image retrieval systems, and proposes a general framework for representing image contents, namely “hierarchical model of image content elements”. Based on this hierarchical model, the prototype image database sys­ tems are constructed on NOAA and GMS satellite cloud imagery. Because of the usage of graph structure as the image representation model, this image database system is successful in representing the spatial relationship or structural image features in addition to regional image features such as shape and color. Experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness and potential of similarity­based image retrieval, or more broadly content­based image database systems.

Jose Martinez received his Ph. D. from the University of Montpellier II, France, in December of 1992, with designing new recovery and concurrency control protocols in object­oriented databases. He is an assistant professor at the Institut de Recherche et d’Enseignement Superieur aux Techniques de l’Electronique (IRESTE), Nantes, France, an electronic and computer engineering school, as well as a researcher in the team Systemes d’Informations et de Connaissances (SIC) of the Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Nantes (IRIN). His current research interest is on multimedia databases and hyperbases: modeling, research by content, indexing, intelligent retrieval and browsing, Java­based user­interfaces. He is the author of an on­going image retrieval database system, named FindImAGE. As part of an international effort (MediaSys) between Ireste and NACSIS, it is being integrated in the AHYDS hypermedia delivery platform, a project at NACSIS, Japan.

Noureddine Mouaddib received his D. Sc. and Ph. D. from the Henri Poincare University of Nancy, France, respectively in 1995 and in 1989, in computer science. He is an professor at the Institut de Recherche et d’Enseignement Superieur aux Techniques de l’Electronique (IRESTE), Nantes, France, an electronic and computer engineering school, as well as a researcher leader in the team Systemes d’Informations et de Connaissances (SIC) of the Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Nantes (IRIN). His current research interest is on multimedia databases and media mining: modeling, research by content, indexing, intelligent and fuzzy retrieval. As part of an international effort, it is being integrated in the AHYDS hypermedia delivery platform, a project at NACSIS, Japan.