Happy kids visited the ETRO Build your climate-proof LEGO city boot at  CurieuCity and it was also broadcasted on Bruzz tv this weekend.

https://curieucity.brussels/nl/build-your-climate-resistant-city-of-the-future/

On November 7th 2024 at 16:00, Boris Joukovsky will defend their PhD entitled “ SIGNAL PROCESSING MEETS DEEP LEARNING: INTERPRETABLE AND EXPLAINABLE NEURAL NETWORKS FOR VIDEO ANALYSIS, SEQUENCE MODELING AND COMPRESSION”.

Everybody is invited to attend the presentation in room I.0.01 or online via this link.

There is growing use of deep learning for solving signal processing tasks, and deep neural networks (DNNs) often outperform traditional methods little domain knowledge needed. However, DNNs behave as black boxes, making it difficult to understand their decisions. The empirical approaches to design DNNs often lack theoretical guarantees and create high computational requirements, which poses risks for applications requiring trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI). This thesis addresses these issues, focusing on video processing and sequential problems across three domains: (1) efficient, model-based DNN designs, (2) generalization analysis and information-theory-driven learning, and (3) post-hoc explainability.

The first contributions consist of new deep learning models for successive frame reconstruction, foreground-background separation, and moving object detection in video. These models are based on the deep unfolding method, a hybrid approach that combines deep learning with optimization techniques, leveraging low-complexity prior knowledge of the data. The resulting networks require fewer parameters than standard DNNs. They outperform DNNs of comparable size, large semantic-based convolutional networks, as well the underlying non-learned optimization methods.

The second area focuses on the theoretical generalization of deep unfolding models. The generalization error of reweighted-RNN (the model that performs video reconstruction) is characterized using Rademacher complexity analysis. This is a first-of-its-kind result that bridges machine learning theory with deep unfolding RNNs.

Another contribution in this area aims to learn optimally compressed, quality-scalable representations of distributed signals: a scheme traditionally known as Wyner-Ziv coding (WZC). The proposed method shows that deep models can retrieve layered binning solutions akin to optimal WZC, which is promising to learn constructive coding schemes for distributed applications.

The third area introduces InteractionLIME, an algorithm to explain how deep models learn multi-view or multi-modal representations. It is the first model-agnostic explanation method design to identify the important feature pairs across inputs that affect the prediction. Experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness on contrastive vision and language models.

In conclusion, this thesis addresses important challenges in making deep learning models more interpretable, efficient, and theoretically grounded, particularly for video processing and sequential data, thereby contributing to the development of more trustworthy AI systems.

You van visit the LEGO urban planner again and design your climate-resilient city at “Dag van de Wetenschap” (Science Day) on Sunday 26 November at Muntpunt.

Lucas Moura Santana won the 2022-2023 IEEE SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award

1. If it is the intention, to apply for a FWO travel grant, then DO NOT use the VUB OMNIA travel platform to book your trip!
   Otherwise, if FWO approves your travel grant, it won’t be possible anymore to get reimbursement for your travel, because if booked via the VUB travel platform, OMNIA will send an invoice to VUB and FWO only pays invoices directly to OMNIA, and addressed to FWO.
   OMNIA is not willing to make a credit note for the VUB invoice and charges a fee for re-issuing an invoice.

Here you find the way to book a research travel via OMNIA, if you want to apply for a FWO ‘Travel Grant’:
Financien – RESERVERING DIENSTREIS indien gefinancierd met FWO REISKREDIET (service-now.com)
https://vub.service-now.com/sp/?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0014417 => English

2. OMNIA is one of the VUB official travel agencies! VUB has a framework contract with OMNIA Travel. (Which you better not use in the above mentioned condition!)
   Financien – Dienstreizen: voordelen gebruik raamovereenkomst dienstreizen (service-now.com)

• Jan Cornelis becomes HoD.
• First Patent on an optical switch (IMOS) is filed.
• ETRO becomes co-founder of the International Postgraduate Course on Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics (University of Patras) – Erasmus/Tempus.
• ETRO’s first EU framework project, BIOLAB: An Integrated Biomedical Laboratory – AIM- Advanced Informatics in Medicine.
• Data collection, drafting and validation of the first ever table of sizes for the Belgian apparel industry.