Office of Research Services (ORS)

Research Chairs: Ling Guan

Canada Research Chair in Multimedia and Computer Technology

Ryerson University
Tier 1 - November 1, 2001
Natural Sciences and Engineering

(416) 979-5000 ext. 6072
lguan@ee.ryerson.ca

Research Involves

Investigation, modelling and development of solutions for the search, management and transmission of digital media over Internet/wireless networks, and application of the research to various real-world applications such as distance education, telemedicine, e-entertainment, and more.

Research Relevance

Will help the Canadian information technology industry maintain and increase its global competitiveness by enabling multimedia communication hardware and software with enhanced performance, high reliability, compact size and minimum manufacturing cost.

Making Multimedia Communications Faster, Better, Cheaper

The rapid development of multimedia technologies is profoundly changing the way we access information and how we communicate. It affects how we learn and educate, provide and access services, conduct business and entertain. As digitization and encoding of images and video have become more affordable, computer and Web database systems are beginning to store voluminous multimedia data. However, while data acquisition technology has advanced rapidly, technologies for processing and transmitting multimedia information in large archives have not kept pace.

Dr. Ling Guan has an international reputation in multimedia processing and communications, and some of his most valuable work has been recognized as pioneer work in the field. As Canada Research Chair in Multimedia and Computer Technology, Dr. Guan will continue to make significant contributions to the field with his fundamental and applied research in the coding, indexing and retrieval, analysis and transmission of multimedia data over Internet/wireless networks.

An interdisciplinary research team with diverse expertise - from embedded hardware to high-level application development - will work together within the newly established Laboratory for Multimedia Processing and Communications (LMPC). The integrated and innovative research program will therefore be an investigation of multimedia systems in their entirety from source to destination: data generation (coding), transmission (network management), access (search and retrieval) and delivery to the end-user (human-computer interface) in a most economical way (hardware implementation).

Dr. Guan's research team is expected to develop novel multimedia processing and communications techniques that will lead to real-world applications such as tele-medicine, distance education, e-commerce, teleconferencing, security/surveillance, and e-entertainment. The LMPC promises to be a state-of-the-art research facility that will allow cutting edge research in a wide spectrum of multimedia technologies, and provide the basis for expanded collaborations and research exchanges.