Rosenblum Award Provides Valuable Research Opportunity

CSE sophomore Jacob Jensen was selected from a pool of nine applicants as the winner of the first Rosenblum Undergraduate Research Opportunity Award (RUROA).

MSU’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering initiated the award to provide research opportunities for its undergraduate students. It is funded by a generous gift from Paul Rosenblum, who has a long-term passion for supporting undergraduate research.

CSE undergraduates were invited to select from a list of available research projects—in the areas of biometrics, computer vision, machine learning, and graphics—and submit a one-page proposal indicating why they would be interested in working on that particular project.

Jensen worked alongside Xiaoming Liu, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, both fall and spring semesters.

“The goal of this project is to enable face recognition on a wearable platform,” Liu said.

For example, an individual, wearing a camera on his/her head, is approached by another person, whom they cannot remember. The wearable camera could capture the face image of the approaching person and perform a face matching with a list of subjects that the individual has previously encountered.

“This technology could be used in a wide variety of applications, including human-computer interaction (HCI), human-to-human communication, and senior care,” Liu said.

Jensen’s role was to research the various topics and cameras available for the project, develop a mobile device-based system to detect and recognize faces, and evaluate the system performance.

“This project provides undergraduates with hands-on experience across the full spectrum of academic research and project development,” Liu said. “The research aspect allows them to understand the state of the art for a particular problem and discover new knowledge. The project development enables students to apply classroom knowledge to real-world problems. Furthermore, it is beneficial for undergraduates to work in emerging areas in computer science, such as the wearable computing in this project.”

“In today’s job market, it is vital for a candidate to have experience in the field,” Jensen said. “Most companies look for applicants who have participated in team-based projects, or who have had summer internships. This experience will help me develop skills that I will need to succeed in the field.”

Marco Botros, a CSE senior, also worked on the project.