The Digital Media & Systems Research Institute
The Digital Media & Systems Research Institute at the University of Bradford is a focus of multi-disciplinary research and technology innovations, providing internationally recognised expertise and excellence for digital media creation, processing, analysis, protection, transmission and system development. Research activities and expertise within the Institute are organised by the following structure:
- Interactive media is being investigated across the boundaries of HCI, interactive video, multimodal interfacing, semantic visual content analysis, and computer visions;
- Intelligent media is being investigated across the boundaries of computational intelligence, software engineering, data fusion and data mining;
- Security media is to be investigated across the boundaries of data encryption, watermarking, authentication, digital signature of media content, and content protection;
- Bio-medical media is being investigated across the boundaries of medical imaging, bio-data analysis, bioinformatics, health care, and systems biology;
- Networked media is being investigated across the boundaries of video transmission over networks, source-channel coding, QoS, scalable video coding, distributed computing, and networked media management;
- Virtual media is being investigated across the boundaries of geometric design, virtual reality, mixed reality, computer animation, computer gaming, virtual environment, multimedia and visual information processing;
- Visual media is being investigated by focusing on image and video content processing, where semantic features rather than low-level features are being extracted, constructed, and recognized for a range of applications, including visual pattern recognition, visual information search & retrieval, computer vision, visual content interpretation, summarization and annotations;
- Mobile media is being investigated across the boundaries of mobile content generation, mobile video compression, mobile media processing, mobile visual applications, and mobile biometrics recognition.
- The Digital Imaging Research Group, located in the School of Computing, Informatics and Media, focuses on research in image/video compression, image processing in compressed domain, medical imaging, image retrieval, interactive video, 3D imaging/video, object tracking, digital media security, digital watermarking and face recognition, pattern recognition. Further expansion and collaboration will also be considered to include computer graphics, virtual presence, computer gaming, animation and visual content processing, modelling and editing. See the Digital Imaging Research Group website for more information.
The Institute currently has more than 50 researchers working on various nationally funded and EU funded research projects, among which the funded EU projects include:
- "EcoGem: Cooperative Advanced Driver Assistance System for Green Cars"
European Framework-7 funded STREP project; 2.6 million Euros for 30 months; To be started subject to on-going contract negotiation; European Contract No. 260097; In collaboration with: (i) TEMSA AR-GE, Turkey; (ii) PININFARINA S.p.A, Italy; (iii) European Virtual Engineering, Spain; (iv) HI-IBERIA Ingenieria Y Proyectos SL, Spain; (v) ITS, Poland; (vi) Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, Greece; (vii) Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications SA, Greece; (viii) SOFTECO Sismat S.p.A Italy; (ix) NAVETEQ B.V.; Netherlands. - "MICIE: Tool for Systemic Risk Analysis and Secure Mediation of Data Exchanged across Linked CI Information Infrastructures"
European Framework-7 funded STREP project; 2 million Euros for 36 months from 1st of October, 2008; European Contract No. 225353; In collaboration with: (i) Selex Communications S.p.A., Italy; (ii) Centre de Recherch Public Henri Tudor, Luxembourg; (iii) Telecommunication University of Rome, Italy; (iv) University of Rome, Italy; (v) Enea, Italy; (vi) Industrial Resarch Institute of Automation and Measurements, Poland; (vii) Israel Electric Corp, Israel; (viii) Itrust Consulting A.a.r.l. Luxembourg; (ix) Multitel asbl, Belgium; (x) University of Coimbra, Portugal. - "HERMES: Cognitive Care and Guidance for Active Aging"
European Framework-7 funded STREP project; 3 million Euros for 36 months starting from 1st of January, 2008; European Contract No. 216709; In collaboration with: (i) Centre for Usability Research & Engineering, Austria; (ii) INGEMA Foundation, Spain; (iii) IBM Haifa Research Laboratory, Israel; (iv) Athens Information Institute, Greece; (v) TXT E-solutions, Italy. - "PROTAGE: Preservation Organization Using Tools in Agent Environment"
European Framework-7 funded STREP project; 2 million Euros for 36 months starting from 1st of November, 2007; European Contract No. 216746; In collaboration with: (i) National Archives of Sweden; (ii) National Archives of Estonia; (iii) Lulea University of Technology, Sweden; (iv) Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Forderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. Germany; (v) EASY Innovation S.L. Spain; (vi) Giunti Labs S.r.l. Italy. - "Live: Live Staging of Media Events"
European Framework-6 funded Integrated Project; 7 million Euros for 45 months from 1st of January, 2006; European Contract No. 027312; In collaboration with: (i) Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. Germany; (ii) Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany; (iii) ORF, Austria national TV broadcaster, Austria; (iv) Atos Origin, Spain; (v) University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; (vi) University of Applied Science Cologne, Germany; (vi) Salzburg Research Institute, Austria; (vii) Sony NetServices, Austria. - "MDS: Misuse Detection System"
European Framework-6 funded STREP project; 1.35 million Euros for 36 months from 1st of April, 2006; European Contract No. 026459; In collaboration with: (i) ComArch S.A. Poland; (ii) University of Bremen, Germany; (iii) Tekever, Portugal; (iv) Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa, Poland; (v) University of Bournemouth.
and the national research programme initiatives in the United Kingdom include:
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"Digital Media Research & Innovations at European Level: Travel Grant to Bid for EU Funding under FP-7 Programme"
UK national project funded by EPSRC; £60,000 for 36 months starting from 1st of April, 2007. - "Computerised Classification of Normal Mammograms for Breast Cancer Screening"
UK nationally funded project, £90,000 for 36 months starting from 1st of February, 2006. - "Pade's Approximation Theories towards Optimised Interpolations for High Frame Rate 3D Digital Projection"
UK national project funded by EPSRC; £60,000 for 36 months from 1st of September, 2005; In collaboration with Digital Projections Ltd., Manchester.
Over the years, the Institute has established fruitful links and collaborations both internationally and nationally, ranging from the technology-oriented research to the media industry, which are represented by: (i) joint research projects and teaching programmes with the UK National Media Museum, which is next door to the University of Bradford campus; (ii) Patron of the Institute, Lord David Puttnam CBE, Film Producer and Chairman of Enigma Productions Ltd. He is the producer of award winning feature films such as Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire, The Killing Fields, and The Mission; (iii) A Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in the Research Institute, Professor Charles Sandbank, Broadcasting Technology Advisor (DTI), and former Head of Research at BBC TV; (iv) Bradford Royal Infirmary for providing medical expertise and test medical images for research activities under bio-medical media; and (v) well-established links with a range of Chinese leading research organisations, including Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, and Southwest University etc. The Institute is also well equipped with world-leading state-of-the-art facilities for research, development and innovations. This is represented by a specialised digital studio equipped with a state-of-the-art motion capture suite, which is capable of accurately and digitally recording the performance of an actor using sensors and cameras placed around a room on tripods to capture his movement (including a data glove to capture finger and hand movements). The system is the same as the one that made Gollum’s movements so good in Lord of the Rings, as well as countless other characters in Star Wars, Spiderman, The Mummy and Titanic in both games and movies.