From August 12 to 15, 2011, the Sixth International Conference on Image and Graphics (ICIG 2011), which was organized by China Society of Image and Graphics (CSIG) and hosted by USTC, was held in Daoxianglou Hotel, Hefei. Mr. XU Guanhua, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Chairman of the China Society of Image and Graphics, and former Minister of Science and Technology of China, attended the Conference and delivered a speech. Mr. NI Fake, Vice Governor of Anhui Province, addressed the opening ceremony. Prof. CHEN Chusheng, Vice President of USTC, gave a speech on behalf of USTC. Prof. LI Weiping, IEEE Fellow, Dean of School of Information Science & Technology (SIST) of USTC, also attended the opening ceremony. IEEE Fellow, Prof. CHEN Changwen from State University of New York at Buffalo acted as the General Chair of the Conference and introduced the arrangement of the Conference to all the attendees. The opening ceremory was presided by Prof. YU Nenghai from SIST, who is also the Chair of Organizing Committee of the Conference and Vice General Secretary of CSIG. Other distinguished guests included Ms. QIU Jianghui, Secretary of Party Committee of Government’s Counselors of Anhui Province, Mr. ZHOU Jianqiang, Secretary of Party Committee of Anhui Association for Science and Technology, Vice Director of the Committee of Education, Science, Culture, Health and Sports of People’s Political Consultative Conference of Anhui Province, Mr. WANG Xun, Vice Director of Department of Science and Technology of Anhui Province, Prof. WEI Sui, Government Counselor of Anhui Province, former Vice Chair of CSIG, Prof. ZHANG Yujin, Director of Academic Committee of CSIG from Tsinghua University, and Prof. LIU Kailong, General Secretary of CSIG.

Academician XU Guanhua pointed out that, it has been emphasized in the 12th National Five-year Program Guideline that we should “make overall improvement of informationization, promote the in-depth fusion of informationization and industrialization, and positively promote the development of information technology”. The aim of CSIG is to meet the nation’s major strategic needs, integrate the research discipline of image and graphics in both theoretical and applicational aspects with focus on those vital scientific questions, and carry out academic and technological research in this area so as to improve the competitiveness of our nation in this strategic field. He wishes that experts, scholars, entrepreneurs from all over the world can further strengthen the cooperation and improve the status of image and graphics in the informationization of the society.

Academician XU Guanhua addressing the opening ceremory


Dean LI Weiping at the opening ceremony


  Prof. CHEN Changwen making introduction of the conference

A total number of 345 scholars from 12 different countries and regions took part in the Conference, among which 6 were IEEE Fellows. Several world famous scholars are invited to deliver keynote speeches. The first speaker was Prof. Mihaela van der Schaar from UCLA. She is an IEEE Fellow and Editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (TMM). In her presentation, she introduced the recent development of multimedia research and presented the theory, methodology and application of multimedia streaming data mining. Prof. Mubarak Shah from University of Central Florida is another keynote speaker. He is a Fellow of IEEE, IAPR, AAAS and SPIE, and the Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) as well. Prof. Shah in his presentation gave an in-depth analysis in mining and unified expression of motion mode in video technology.

In the tutorial session, the Conference invited Prof. MA Yi from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Dr. LIN Zhouchen from Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), and Prof. John Wright from Columbia University to give a report entitled “Low-rank Matrix Recovery: From Theory to Imaging Applications”.

Focusing on some cutting-edge hot issues in multimedia area, the conference organized three workshop lectures. The speakers were Prof. Tat-Seng Chua from National University of Singapore, Prof. Chong-Wah Ngo from City University of Hong Kong, Dr. ZHANG Lei from MSRA separately, and the workshop was presided by Dr. MEI Tao, research scientist of MSRA.

To solve the problem of how to help the students explore their research potential, the Conference also organized the Panel Discussion on purpose. Many successful experts and scholars in this industry were invited to this session to discuss the matter combining with the research experience of their own. The Panel Discussion was co-presided by Prof. LUO Jiebo, IEEE Fellow from University of Rochester, and Prof. XU Dong from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. The Discussion, which was entitled “Maximizing One's Potential in a Research Career”, attracted many scholars including Prof. Mihaela van der Schaar and Prof. Bill Zame from UCLA, Dr. SUN Qibin, IEEE Fellow from HP China, Prof. MA Yi, Prof. Chong-Wah Ngo, and Dr. MEI Tao etc. Their views and experiences inspired the audiences and benefited them a lot.

On the closing ceremony, Prof. ZHANG Yujin did summary on behalf of Organizing Committee of the Conference. And then, Prof. YU Lun, Vice Chair of CSIG, expressed gratefulness to USTC for hosting the Conference and awarded USTC an “Outstanding Organization Award” on behalf of CSIG. He gave highly appraisal that the Conference was a highly internationalized academic conference which pushed ICIG to a new hight. Meanwhile, he thanked Prof. CHEN Changwen and Prof. WEI Sui for their great effort during the Conference, and awarded them “Outstanding Contribution Award”.

During the Conference, the participants were well organized to visit the History Museum of USTC and the School of the Gifted Young so as to better understand the culture and idea of USTC. The Organizing Committee of the Conference also handed out some propaganda materials of SIST in order to promote the development of information science in USTC. The Conference received warm support not only from National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Anhui Association for Science and Technology, MSRA, and Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of CAS (XIOPM), but also from academia and business alumni that are engaged in research and development of Image and Graphics.

International Conference on Image and Graphics (ICIG), which is hosted by China Society of Image and Graphics (CSIG) every two years, is the first domestic top-grade international academic conference in this field. The Sixth ICIG this year promoted the development of image and graphics in and outside China. It also encouraged the academic exchange and cooperation of USTC’s information discipline and boosted the cohesion and solidarity of USTC alumni as well.