Interdisciplinary Center on

Digital and Computational Video

Goals of the Center

The purpose of USF’s Interdisciplinary Center for Digital and Computational Video is to address research and graduate education in the mathematical, technological, and applications aspects of this 21st century theme. Its specific goal is to provide a focal point for multidisciplinary research and education in a broad spectrum of digital and computational video. To this end, research collaboration with industry, governmental agencies, with other universities, and other institutions is of particular concern to the Center.

We are at a point in time where digital video is about to revolutionize the globally networked society. From a society of text-emails to a society of video-friendly emails, video knowledge databases, video-libraries, telemedicine, 3D medical diagnostic tools, virtual sculpting, 3D modeling and animation, distance education on-demand, virtual town halls, and digital television for entertainment and information retrieval. As portrayed in Figure 1, USF’s strengths are synergistic with these themes, themes which form a foundation of the Center’s goals.

Figure 1

The Center is a distributed one. Its current membership consists of 21 faculty/staff members from across the University as listed on page 2. Six university leaders sit on its advisory board, also listed on page 2. In addition, the Center has an external advisory board whose members are leaders in the industry, government, and universities. While overlap and interaction exists, the media related activities primarily reside in the College of Education, College of Visual and Performing Arts, and the School of Mass Communications. The scientific and technical activities reside primarily in the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, although overlap and interaction exists across many units. Other major units which collaborate with the Center are Information Technology, College of Marine Sciences, and USF’s public television, WUSF-TV – which is housed in a new building with all-digital facilities for serving a large constituency in this, the 13th largest, television market. Among the major projects of the Center are the International Workshops on Digital and Computational Video, 1999, 2001 (in collaboration with NIST), and 2002. The fourth workshop in the sequel is planned for Yr. 2004.