URBANA, Ill. — Three Beckman Institute researchers were selected to receive a research award as part of the HP 2009 HP Labs Innovation Research Program. The researchers who were selected include Narendra Ahuja, Thomas Huang, and Jiawei Han. They were chosen as part of a group of 60 professors who will take part in the HP program which is designed to create opportunities for colleges, universities, and research institutes around the world to conduct breakthrough collaborative research with HP.
The University of Illinois will collaborate with HP Labs on a research initiative focused on data mining and multidimensional text database analysis technology. The winning projects are “3D Reconstruction of Dynamic Real-World Objects and 3D Motion Aided Gesture Recognition” (Ahuja); “Mining Image Semantics Using an Ontological Framework” (Huang); and “PowerText: Exploration of the Power of TextCube in the High-Performance Analysis of Multidimensional Text Database” (Han). A fourth University of Illinois researcher, William Sanders, was also selected with his project “Prediction and Provenance for Multi-Objective Information Security Management.” Sanders is the acting director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory at Illinois.
“The HP Labs Innovation Research Program is a wonderful opportunity for Illinois researchers to expand and enhance their lines of research, and to connect with an industrial powerhouse,” said Tamer Başar, interim director, Beckman Institute. “We have the best and the brightest in these fields and we are pleased to have four Illinois researchers selected by HP.”
Building on the success of last year’s inaugural program, HP has increased the number of funded projects to include more than 60 projects from 46 universities in 12 countries.
“Our goal with this program is to collaborate with the brightest minds from around the world to tackle the industry’s most complex problems and push the frontiers of fundamental science,” said Prith Banerjee, senior vice president, Research, HP, and director, HP Labs. “Illinois has demonstrated outstanding achievement and a vision that will help inspire technological innovation and address the most complex challenges and opportunities facing the industry in the next decade.”
HP reviewed nearly 300 proposals from more than 140 universities in 29 countries on a range of topics within the eight high-impact research themes at HP Labs – analytics, cloud, content transformation, digital commercial print, immersive interaction, information management, intelligent infrastructure and sustainability. More details about the HP Labs Innovation Research Program and worldwide award recipients are available at http://www.hpl.hp.com/open_innovation/irp/2009_results.html.