**PREMIA NEWSLETTER (ISSUE 7)** *Members' Spotlight: * Dr. David R. Hardoon is presently a research associate at the centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning, University College London. He is currently working on projects that are focused on learning the structure of music, medical analysis, multilingual and multi-modal integration. He has a keen interest in multi-view learning, kernel methods, regression, and sparsity -- all within the context of developing novel methods that will answer specific complex questions from important application domains. He has previously worked on various research projects in the fields of Taxonomy, Image analysis, classification and content based retrieval systems. David received his first class BSc Hons. in Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence from the Royal Holloway, University of London and his PhD in Computer Science in the field of Machine Learning from the University of Southampton. He has also received the PhD PASCAL label award from his active participation in the PASCAL network of excellence. More information regarding his work is available on http://www.davidroihardoon.com. *PREMIA Member¡¯s Night* Nearly 50 members attended PREMIA members' night on the 12th day of the Chinese New Year, i.e. 6 February 2009 (Friday), at Singapore Polytechnic Graduates' Guild. PREMIA¡¯s president, Dr. Guan Cuntai, gave an exciting talk on brain-computer interface (BCI). Participants (member or non-member) enjoyed a sumptuous buffet meal and Chinese snacks for the night, and participated in the sure-win Hong Bao Lucky Draw. Each Hong Bao contains $10 cash and a POPULAR voucher ranging from $10 to $50. Make sure to register for members' night next year to have a chance at these fabulous door prizes! *Best Student Paper in 2008 Award* PREMIA has offered two Best Student Paper awards for papers published in 2008 ($1000 for First Prize winner and $500 for Second Prize winner). The result was announced in PREMIA Members' Night 2009 in Singapore Polytechnic Graduates' Guild on Feb 12 2009. The First Prize winner is Ni Bingbing, and the Second Prize winner is Tai Yu Wing. PREMIA president Dr. Guan Cuntai and vice president Prof. Tan Chew Lim presented awards to the winners. *PREMIA Short Course on Introduction to Medical Image Processing* PREMIA held a short course on Introduction to Medical Image Processing on July 6th and 7th this year in School of Computing, National University of Singapore. The two-day short course provided a basic understanding of medical imaging and explained what medical images can offer to medical practitioners and researchers. This was done by introducing some of the basic concepts of image processing and pattern recognition in medical contexts. Two modalities of medical images were used as case studies, namely, MRI/CT brain images and ophthalmological images. Various medical imaging projects were described and there were a session for participants to share and relate to their own problems in medical imaging. The main speaker, Prof. Emanuele Trucco, from University of Dundee, has many years of experience in medical imaging. In addition, two medical doctors, Dr Tchoyoson Lim and Dr. Pang Boon Chuan from National Neuroscience Institute were invited to deliver talks from medical practitioners¡¯ perspectives. *PREMIA Annual General Meeting (AGM) in 2009* The 2009 Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held in the evening of 19 August (Wednesday) at Singapore Polytechnic Graduates' Guild, 1010 Dover Road, Singapore 139658 (Singapore Poly Gate No 4). We have prepared a rich program for the night. As in our past AGMs, we will have a pre-AGM talk on advanced Hough transform to be given by A/Prof. Shi Daming. Hough transform is a common method for the detection of simple objects such as lines and circles in digital images. Members are invited to a dinner before the talk. The full program for that night is as follows: 6:30 pm - 7:00 pm Registration 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm Dinner begins 7:30 pm - 8:15 pm "Advanced Hough Transform Using A Multilayer Fractional Fourier Method" by A/Prof. Shi Daming AGM Agenda: Confirmation of Minutes of AGM 2008 President's Report Treasurer's Report Confirmation of Auditors 2008/2010 Any Other Business *PREMIA seminars* We recently held the following seminars jointly with NUS, NTU, I2R, or IEEE Singapore Chapter: 1. Bayesian Ying Yang Harmony Learning, by Prof. Xu Lei, IEEE Fellow, IAPR Fellow, Member of European Academy of Sciences. (12 Jan 2009) 2. Current Concepts and Future Directions in Virtual Colonoscopy Computer-Aided Detection, by Dr. Ron Summers, M.D., Ph.D. Senior Investigator and Staff Radiologist Chief, Clinical Image Processing Service Chief, Virtual Endoscopy and Computer-Aided Diagnosis Laboratory Radiology and Imaging Sciences National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. (13 Jan 2009) 3. Human Motion Analysis and Representation in Video Media, by Prof. Yuncai Liu, Distinguished Professor of Changjiang Scholarship Award Program of the Ministry of Education and Honor Professor of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. (4 Feb 2009) *Upcoming IAPR conferences and events* Call for papers: [ANNPR 2010]: 11-13 Apr 2010, Cairo, Egypt - 4th International Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition. [CIP 2010]: 14-16 Jun 2010, Elba Island (Tuscany), Italy - 2nd International Workshop on Cognitive Information Processing. [ICISP 2010]: 30 Jun-2 Jul 2010, Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Canada - International Conference on Image and Signal Processing 2010. [ICPR 2010]: 23-26 Aug 2010, Istanbul, Turkey - 20th International Conference on Pattern Recognition. [ICFHR 2010]: 16-18 Nov 2010, Kolkata, India - 12th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition. [ICDAR 2011]: 18-21 Sep 2011, Beijing, China - 11th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition. Call for participation: [IWCF09]: 13-14 Aug 2009, The Hague, The Netherlands - 3rd International Workshop on Computational Forensics. [CAIP 2009]: 2-4 Sep 2009, M¨¹nster, Germany - 13th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns. [PRIB 2009]: 7-9 Sep 2009, Sheffield, United Kingdom - 4th IAPR International Workshop on Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics. [ICIAP 2009]: 8-11 Sep 2009, Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy - 15th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing. [VSMM 2009]: 9-12 Sep 2009, Vienna, Austria - 15th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia. [DGCI 2009]: 30 Sep-2 Oct 2009, Montreal, Canada - 15th International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery. [CIARP 2009]: 15-18 Nov 2009, Guadalajara, M¨¦xico - 14th Iberoamerican Conference on Pattern Recognition. A full list of conferences is available directly from the IAPR website at: http://www.iapr.org/conferences *IAPR newsletter* Get the latest issue from PREMIA website http://www.premia-sg.org or IAPR website http://www.iapr.org/publications , or use the links below to get the newsletters directly from PREMIA website: January 2009: http://www.premia-sg.org/newsletter/Newsletter09-01.pdf April 2009: http://www.premia-sg.org/newsletter/Newsletter09-02.pdf July 2009: http://www.iapr.org/docs/newsletter-2009-03.pdf *PREMIA Members' benefits* Join PREMIA, a chapter of the International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR) http://www.iapr.org/ . Benefits of PREMIA membership include: - All the benefits of IAPR membership, including the quarterly IAPR e-Newsletter, and a 10% discount in registration fees for all IAPR conferences and workshops http://www.iapr.org/conferences/ . - PREMIA Members enjoy discounted or free attendance at local PREMIA events, including industry outreach activities, focused seminars, conferences, courses, or lectures. If you are not a PREMIA member yet, come join us at http://www.premia-sg.org/content/view/9/55/. If you would like to share your new research work with PREMIA members, please email to Dr. Terence Sim (tsim@comp.nus.edu.sg).