Visual Media Research Platform Grant

The Visual Media Platform Grant awarded in 2003 has successfully underpinned the expansion of Visual Media Research within CVSSP by supporting key experienced post-doctoral research personnel on a stable long-term basis. Strategically the platform grant has allowed the flexibility to pursue adventurous research providing the foundation to initiate a number of new research projects and collaborations with both industry and international research groups. Stable support of a critical-mass of experience has led to the groups research grant portfolio doubling over the period 2003-07. In addition the platform grant has directly contributed to pioneering two new technologies leading to commercial exploitation: 3D video capture of facial dynamics; and whole-body surface motion capture. The platform grant has allowed the initiation of a number of international collaborations with leading research teams in the US, Europe and Japan. EPSRC platform grant support for Visual Media Research has been pivotal to meeting the strategic objective of increasing the international profile and impact of the research group and individual researchers by enabling adventurous research contributing step changes to the state-of-the-art.The strategic objective of the platform grant renewal is for the Visual Media Research within CVSSP to lead fundamental research internationally to pioneer new technologies which impact directly on industry practice. This will build on the proven success of the platform grant awarded in 2003 as a mechanism for supporting long-term research continuity of key post-doctoral researchers, pursuing adventurous research to initiate new research directions and contributing advances to the leading edge internationally . Renewal of the platform grant is requested to continue to reinforce the critical mass of expertise and knowledge of specialist facilities required to contribute advances in both fundamental understanding and pioneering new technology. Strategically the platform grant renewal aims to build on recent advances in dynamic scene analysis towards understanding and modelling real-world scenes. Increasing relevance and collaboration with the UK entertainment and communications industries, and focusing on international collaborations initiated under the existing platform grant with leading groups in the US (Washington), Japan (Kyoto) and Europe(INRIA,MPI,EPFL,KTH,CTU).