ECE Researchers win Best Paper Award at the 2020 ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (MMSys)

A team of researchers led by ECE Assistant Professor Sheng Wei has won the Best Paper Award at the ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (MMSys 2020) for their paper titled "QuRate: Power-Efficient Mobile Immersive Video Streaming”. ACM MMSys is one of the major conferences of the ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia (SIGMM). It provides a forum for researchers to present and share their latest research findings in multimedia systems. This work was conducted by Prof. Wei and his PhD student Nan Jiang, in collaboration with researchers from both academia and industry (SUNY Binghamton, WPI, SUNY Buffalo, Adobe Research, and UNL).

In addition to the Best Paper Award, the paper also won the DASH-IF Excellence in DASH Award (3rd place) presented at ACM MMSys 2020. This award acknowledges papers substantially addressing MPEG-DASH (i.e., the international standard for adaptive video streaming over HTTP) as the presentation format and are selected for presentation at ACM MMSys 2020. Preference is given to practical enhancements and developments which can sustain future commercial usefulness of MPEG-DASH.

Congratulations to Sheng and his team on this recognition!

The abstract of the award winning paper is below:

Smartphones have recently become a popular platform for deploying the computation-intensive virtual reality (VR) applications, such as immersive video streaming (a.k.a., 360-degree video streaming). One specific challenge involving the smartphone-based head mounted display (HMD) is to reduce the potentially huge power consumption caused by the immersive video. To address this challenge, we first conduct an empirical power measurement study on a typical smartphone immersive streaming system, which identifies the major power consumption sources. Then, we develop QuRate, a quality-aware and user-centric frame rate adaptation mechanism to tackle the power consumption issue in immersive video streaming. QuRate optimizes the immersive video power consumption by modeling the correlation between the perceivable video quality and the user behavior. Specifically, QuRate builds on top of the user's reduced level of concentration on the video frames during view switching and dynamically adjusts the frame rate without impacting the perceivable video quality. We evaluate QuRate with a comprehensive set of experiments involving 5 smartphones, 21 users, and 6 immersive videos using empirical user head movement traces. Our experimental results demonstrate that QuRate is capable of extending the smartphone battery life by up to 1.24X while maintaining the perceivable video quality during immersive video streaming. Also, we conduct an Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved subjective user study to further validate the minimum video quality impact caused by QuRate.

 

 

 

 

Access to Graduate Level Research Opportunities

Senior Spotlight
Mohammad Nadeem, ENG ‘20
 

Choosing to attend Rutgers School of Engineering was an easy decision for Mohammed Nadeem, who graduated in May as a computer engineering major in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). “I knew the research opportunities were pretty good – that was the main attraction,” he says.

From the start, the Cherry Hill, New Jersey native wanted to study technology and electronics. “I really like software engineering and machine learning,” he explains. Even more important, “I liked the fact that undergraduates could do research with whatever professor they wanted to, as ECE professors are pretty open to that idea.”

As a result, in his junior year, Nadeem joined the Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory (CPS Lab) run by ECE professor Dario Pompili, where he was exposed to – and engaged in – graduate-level research.

Nadeem recalls that after receiving an email saying the lab was looking for people to work on a new project, he looked into it. “The project was very interesting, as it worked with programming an underwater robot to perform autonomous tasks. I thought that would be pretty cool. There are self-driving robots, cars, and drones – but nothing underwater, which made this a really unique project.”

As part of the research team, Nadeem programmed the remotely operated underwater vehicles to take adaptive sampling for near-real-time water-quality assessments. The samples would be able to be stored for subsequent retrieval for analysis.

Pompili recalls, “He finished his spring semester research by designing a distributed sampling algorithm that used consensus to determine which vehicles should sample which areas. Afterward, the research expanded into using multi-agent reinforcement learning to conduct adaptive sampling.”

Nadeem gained first-hand experience in publishing when he co-authored a research paper under the guidance of Pompili and ECE doctoral students. The paper, which presented CPS Lab research regarding optimized sampling, was published in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Conference on Underwater Networks and Systems (WUWNet) in October 2019.

“I like working on interesting problems,” says Nadeem. “The CPS Lab gave me the ability to do that while also working in so many different areas of engineering. The work I’ve done has really broadened my knowledge and given me a lot of experience.”

It is experience and knowledge that earned Nadeem and fellow team members First Prize – tying with students from MIT and Peking University – in a prestigious Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer’s competition last fall. “We basically used the underwater vehicles to create a network able to monitor marine pollution,” he explains.

In addition to research opportunities, Nadeem has enjoyed the freedom and flexibility to take different classes in different departments and gain new knowledge. He is convinced that this is one of the biggest advantages of being a Rutgers student.

He also enjoyed the experience of serving on a planning committee for the Muslim Student Association (MSA) during his sophomore year, as well as being a member of ECE Honor Society, Eta Kappa Nu – and encourages new students to be active in extra-curricular activities right away.

Nadeem is eager to start a year-long software engineering residency with Google in New York City come summer. “I’ll receive two months of training in Google products and tools before doing a rotation through two teams for five months each,” he explains. Residents in this highly desirable program are likely to be hired after the year is up.

Taking a longer view, Nadeem also looks forward to giving back to the school. “I benefited from scholarships – and it would be really nice if in the future I could donate some money and help someone else with their tuition.”

ECE Undergraduate & Graduate Award Presentation

The 2020 Undergraduate and Graduate Award Ceremony was held online on Wednesday June 3rd.
A copy of the presentation slides is available here.

Opening remarks were made by ECE Chair Narayan Mandayam, Dean Thomas N. Farris, and ECE Undergraduate Director Wade Trappe.

ECE Faculty presented Undergraduate Leadership / Service Awards to:

           Timothy Petersen
           Angie Flores
           James Pasko
           Eric Kraut
           Soo Min Kwon
           Sagar Shah

The George and Ilsa Goubau Memoria Awards for Academic Excellence and Strength in Electromagnetics were presented to:

            Lori Cheng
            Alexander Laemmle

The Rutgers Engineering Society Outstanding Undergraduate Awards were presented to:

           Shantanu Laghate
           Varun Ravichandran

Graduate awards introductory remarks were given by Graduate Director Zoran Gajic. The ECE Graduate Program had 28 doctoral graduates in the 2019/2020 school year.

The following doctoral graduates are the recipients of the ECE Graduate Program Academic Achievement Awards:

          Jian Liu (advisor Prof. Chen)
          Zahra Shakeri (advisor Prof. Bajwa)
          Hafiz Imtiaz (advisor Prof. Sarwate)
          Mehmet Atkas (advisor Prof. Soljanin)
          Tashina Sanam (advisor Prof. Godrich)
          Muhammad A. Lodhi (advisor Prof. Bajwa)

The Teaching Assistant Award for the Spring 2019 semester were presented to:

         Amir Behrouzi Far
         Batoul Taki
         Fangzhou Yu

The Teaching Assistant Award for the Fall 2019 semester were presented to:

         Muhammad Khizar Anjum
         Hua Deng
         Pengfei Xie

The Graduate Leadership / Service Award was given to:

         Diksha Prakash

The Professor Narindra Puri Memorial Endowed Scholarship awards were presented to:

         Intessar Al-Iedani
         Lingyi Xu

The Paul Panayotatos Endowed Scholarship was awarded to:

        Tong Wu 

IEEE Communications Society Phoenix ISS Awards were presented to:

         Wuyang Zhang
         Mohammad Yousefvang

Prof. Narayan Mandayam, the ECE Department Chair gave closing remarks.

Rutgers Senior Daniel Toth Salutes College and Navy ROTC Training

Daniel Toth at the Navy ship selection ceremony when he learned he will be stationed aboard the USS John S. McCain, based in Yokosuka, Japan. Photo credit: Nick Romanenko
When Daniel Toth was living on campus, he would report at 5:30 a.m. for a fitness regimen followed by a naval science class — all before starting his days as a student at Rutgers University. The Navy ROTC midshipman’s favorite workout has been the "strip swim." Dressed in uniform and boots, he and his colleagues would jump into a pool, then take off an article of clothing every 250 meters they swam. “You don’t see the swim team doing that!” he said. 
 
After four years of hard work, Toth found out in a recent tense moment that he achieved his goal: getting to serve aboard the USS John S. McCain, based in Yokosuka, Japan.
 
“It’s all paid off – all that work and all the early mornings. Getting your first choice of ships is hella-nice!” Toth said, as soon as he found out during the annual midshipman selection ceremony.
 
The Navy ROTC ship selection ceremony involves sitting before a live video feed with the Navy Bureau of Personnel in Millington, Tennessee. Students reveal where they hope to serve and then find out if they get their first choice.
 
The electrical engineering major at Rutgers University-New Brunswick ranked 20th out of 300 Navy ROTC midshipmen at 77 colleges nationwide in the Surface Warfare Officers-Nuclear track. His odds on selection day were good, but there was no guarantee the 19 midshipmen ahead of him wouldn’t nab the one slot he sought.
 
But when the time came, the host called his name, and Toth’s image appeared next to hers on the screen. He gave a polite greeting, then calmly announced his choice. The host turned her head to the right for a few seconds, then turned back and said, “You got it!”
 
A grin spread across Toth’s face and applause erupted in the headquarters of the Rutgers University/Princeton University Navy ROTC Unit in New Brunswick.
 
The 22-year-old Middletown native said he is “beyond excited. I’ve been ready to go for a year!” Toth will become an ensign at the Navy ROTC’s commissioning ceremony, which will be held virtually this year on May 18.
 
Toth is one of 42 students from Rutgers ROTC programs, and one of nine from the Navy ROTC, who completed the extra challenge of military training while working on their Rutgers degree. Eight students are graduating in the ROTC Air Force program and 25 are graduating from the Army ROTC. 
 
Toth’s mother, Joli, watched the draft on YouTube, and said she was thrilled for him. “We’re all very proud,” she said. “He’s very driven in everything he does.”
 
Joli Toth said her father served in the Navy, and she has long hoped that one of her five children would join the military. Daniel Toth’s mother, father and older brother are all Rutgers alumni, and his sister is a sophomore at Rutgers-New Brunswick.
 
During the 18 to 24 months on the USS John S. McCain, Toth will be assigned a division and oversee 10 to 30 sailors. He’ll also learn to drive the destroyer. “That will be his real introduction to the Navy,” said Lt. Mark Hammerquist, who oversees the Surface Warfare Officer-Nuclear midshipmen. “We’re very excited for him.”
 
“He worked really, really hard to get this opportunity to serve in the fleet,” said Capt. Andrew F. Smith, commanding officer of the Rutgers University/Princeton University Navy ROTC Unit. Toth will spend the following two years training to operate nuclear reactors, which power the Navy fleet.
 
Growing up by the Jersey Shore, Toth said he happily spent his days on the beach. He never so much as stepped foot on a boat until enrolling in a U.S. Naval Academy program on a whim the summer before his senior year of high school. He applied to the Navy ROTC that fall.
 
Since then, he’s spent summers training on ships. “I really like the technical side of things,” Toth said.
 
Balancing the demands of the Navy ROTC program and maintaining a 3.7 GPA in Rutgers Honors College during his college career has been a challenge.
 
Toth’s leadership responsibilities with his 65-member Navy ROTC unit have increased over his years at Rutgers. Last fall, he organized its Navy birthday ceremony and military ball. As busy as his schedule is, he still finds time to participate in intramural volleyball and softball, he said.
 
Toth said he has not traveled internationally – his family spends vacations visiting family in Hawaii, his mom said. He chose the USS John S. McCain in large part for the overseas experience it offers. “I want to sink my feet into a totally new side of the world,” he said.
 
The ship is also in what’s considered a forward-deployed area, meaning that it is at sea more frequently than others and “the operational tempo is higher,” Toth said. That, he expects, will allow him to acquire greater experience sooner.
 
Since Rutgers moved to remote learning for students in response to COVID-19 and no Navy ROTC activities happening for the rest of the semester, Toth will complete his engineering classes online and continue to work out five or six days a week from home.
 
“It’s kind of an anticlimactic end to a pretty eventful four years,” he said. While he’s disappointed there will be no in-person commencement this May, he’s looking forward to spending three months at ship-handling training in San Diego before boarding the USS John S. McCain.
 
April 7, 2020
 
Story by Margaret McHugh for Rutgers Today
 

Anand D. Sarwate Awarded Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence

Anand D. Sarwate, a professor in the School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently received a Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence. The prestigious award recognizes Sarwate’s achievements as one of the university’s most outstanding young faculty members.

“Receiving this award is a great honor and was a total surprise since I didn’t know I’d been nominated,” Sarwate says. “It makes me feel like I’ve been doing something of value to Rutgers, instead of just to my subspecialty, and that it’s supporting the sum total of my efforts.”

Sarwate, who has been promoted to associate professor effective July 1, joined the School of Engineering faculty in January 2014. He is a 2015 recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award (CAREER) for his research on privacy-preserving learning for distributed data that uses practical algorithms to bridge the gap between the theoretical and actual preservation of privacy.

His ongoing research interests include privacy-preserving data analysis, machine learning and statistics, information theory, and distributed optimization and signal processing.

According to Sarwate, the financial support from the fellowship will help him and the students whose research he supervises in the coming academic year. “Perhaps construed more broadly, a recognition like this helps me remember that research is a long-term endeavor, so that I can focus on projects which may be slow to get off the ground, but which will ultimately make an impact,” he explains.

With this award, Sarwate joins a select group of Rutgers University faculty members distinguished by their exceptional scholarly contributions and achievements. “While I’m doing the research work because it interests me, this award makes me feel connected to the rest of the University,” Sarwate adds.

 

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