Ben Maggos and Edward Shyu Win Calit2 Prize

Ben Maggos and Edward Shyu

11.12.2003 -- After some weeks of deliberation, the layer leaders of the UCSD division have voted to award Calit² Undergraduate Scholar Prizes to
Ben Maggos, in the New Media Arts layer, working under Sheldon Brown, professor in the Visual Arts department.

Edward Shyu, in the Intelligent Transportation and Telematics layer, working under Mohan Trivedi, professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department.

Maggos created an interactive flythrough of the Calit² building being constructed. He has since worked with Doug Ramsey, Calit² media relations, to produce a video of the flythrough for showcasing at the Supercomputing (SC03) conference in Phoenix, AZ, November 17-21.

Edward Shyu's poster

Ben Maggos with his poster

Shyu developed a context-sensitive map leveraging GPS and pan-tilt-zoom camera technologies. This work has application to the needs of highway patrolmen and paramedics by providing an increased range of vision to aid management of traffic and highway accidents. It could also help drivers in general by providing video imagery of nearby landmarks as navigation aids supplementing typical address information.

Maggos addressed his project on several levels -- technical, artistic, and conceptual. He mastered the complex technical skills required and addressed conceptual problems involved in transforming massive data sets across several applications environments that have qualitatively different needs and require different approaches. He also provided leadership, managed the complexities of team dynamics, and coped with the shifting dynamics of a rapidly evolving technology platform. The work he did with the Calit² building database, using data provided by NBBJ (the architectural firm that designed the Calit² building), provides a testbed for development of visualization software that can accommodate large heterogeneous data sets in environments such as the OptIPuter.

Maggos was described by his advisor as "smart, hard working, articulate, insightful, and a great team member - someone who put far more effort into this project than was required, and he got a tremendous amount out of it." Maggos graduates this quarter and hopes to attend graduate school in the fall at the University of Illinois at Chicago, working with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, a key Calit² OptIPuter partner.

Shyu, a Jacobs Scholar, was described by his advisor as a soft spoken, but systematic and highly self-motivated student always open to new ideas and challenges. Once the "big picture" of the project was provided to him, he carefully read relevant literature and developed new skills in programming, interfacing, and system integration. In the words of Trivedi, "his summer research project has become a very good starting point for longer-term research in wireless video, sensor networks, and interfaces. And his contributions are useful to my group's research involving interfaces for intelligent vehicles, first responders, and Bill Griswold's [CSE] ActiveCampus project.