Singapore, 23 October 2008 – Team NUS from the National University of Singapore today clinched the top prize of US$100,000 at the Grand Finals of The StarChallenge@Fusionopolis, the competition's sponsor and organizer, Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) announced.
The other finalist teams were: SHRC from Peking University, China; the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble in France; NII-KAORI/IRISA in Japan; and Team UIUC-YX, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA.
All five finalist teams had survived three increasingly difficult challenges that preceded the Grand Finals, and converged on Singapore for the competition.
At the Grand Finals, which occurred during FusionFest – week-long celebration to mark the opening of Fusionopolis, Singapore's new science and engineering powerhouse – the finalist teams engaged in a close-fought battle that took them through a secret island in "Second Life".
They had to overcome virtual obstacles to win clues that would help them solve the ubiquitous problem of multimedia search.
Using new technologies and algorithms that they had created for the competition, the teams performed voice and video search tasks on a multilingual database in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
In under only two hours, the teams had to find segments of speech and identify video scenes in search tasks structured to resemble the multimedia searches that members of the public would likely want to conduct at their homes and offices, when an efficient next-generation multimedia search engine becomes available.
Today's traditional existing search engines are text-based and, as such, can locate only multimedia material that has been tagged in text.
As tagging is laborious, it is not routinely done, and the tagging that does occur is generally not of high quality and consistent.
Next-generation multimedia search technologies will transform how the public will interact with rich-media material. Considering the exponential growth of multimedia content and the proliferation of user-generated platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Flickr, it is a technology waiting to be invented.
Said Victor Goh from Team NUS, "We are absolutely elated to win the Star Challenge! We would like to thank Professor Chua Tat Seng and all who have supported us….We are pleased with the end results as well as honoured to be up against so many worthy contestants. The next generation multimedia retrieval technology is on its way out!"
Said Charles Zukoski, Ph.D., Chairman of A*STAR's Science and Engineering Research Council, "My congratulations to (winning team), and to the four finalist teams that made their way to Singapore after 10 months of competition! This competition has brought together highly talented young people from all over the world not only in the spirit of competition, but also in the spirit of exchange and friendship. I hope that even as the finalist teams continue to make forays into refining multimedia search, they will also continue to build on the friendships they have made here today. Who knows, one day, we may find that some of these young people here have collaborated together to give us the next multi-media search engine!"
A total of 56 teams from 17 countries entered this global competition when it began 10 months ago. The contestants included search engine enthusiasts as well as several of the world's top laboratories. All of the contestants own the Intellectual Property to their technologies.
For media enquiries, please contact:
In Singapore: Mr Andrew Yap
Acting Manager, Corporate Communications
A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R)
DID: (65) 6419 1143 Fax: (65) 6466 7716
Email: jtyap@i2r.a-star.edu.sg
In the US: Ms Cathy Yarbrough
DID: 858-243-1814, Email: sciencematter@yahoo.com
About Fusionopolis:
Fusionopolis is Singapore's science and technology hub that brings together scientists, research engineers and technology experts from a variety of science and engineering disciplines, to find innovative solutions for technological and lifestyle problems facing society and jumpstart future industries.
Fusionopolis will have more than 1500 researchers from the public labs under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), with a broad spectrum of capabilities ranging from high performance computing to infocomm research, data storage, materials research and engineering, microelectronics, and manufacturing technology. The public labs work alongside corporate labs like those of Vestas, Thales Technology and Seiko Instruments to accelerate the development of technologies and new products, and bring them to market.
Fusionopolis is located in close proximity to A*STAR's biomedical sciences research institutes at Biopolis, which will open up opportunities for the fusion of capabilities across diverse scientific domains, thus paving the way for multi-disciplinary research.
A whole-of-Singapore approach has been taken at Fusionopolis to enable it to jumpstart future industries. Fusionopolis will also be home to Singapore's various industry-development public agencies such as the Media Development Authority, the Economic Development Board and SPRING Singapore.
For more information on Fusionopolis, please visit www.fusionopolis.a-star.edu.sg
About the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR):
A*STAR is Singapore's lead agency for fostering world-class scientific research and talent for a vibrant knowledge-based Singapore. A*STAR actively nurtures public sector research and development in Biomedical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering, with a particular focus on fields essential to Singapore's manufacturing industry and new growth industries. It oversees 22 research institutes, consortia and centres, and supports extramural research with the universities, hospital research centres and other local and international partners. At the heart of this knowledge intensive work is human capital. Top local and international scientific talent drive knowledge creation at A*STAR research institutes. The agency also sends scholars for undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral training in the best universities, a reflection of the high priority A*STAR places on nurturing the next generation of scientific talent.
For more information about A*STAR, please visit www.a-star.edu.sg