USC Delivers a GLIMPSE into the Future of Technology

Invitation-only event to be held January 29 at the USC School of Cinematic Arts

LOS ANGELES – Jan. 22, 2013 – The University of Southern California (USC) invites you to GLIMPSE, a digital technology showcase featuring cutting-edge research from across the university, much of it never presented to a general audience. This exclusive media event will feature presentations and live demonstrations of new technology that is shaping the future, enhancing the present, and preserving the past.

Members of the media who would like to attend GLIMPSE are encouraged to contact glimpse@triplepointpr.com; RSVPs are appreciated by close of business on Thursday, January 24.

“USC’s strength in digital technology includes the collaboration between the arts and engineering, and technology and storytelling, that makes possible a conversation with the avatar of a real witness to history, the recreation of digital actors indistinguishable from their human counterparts, and the development of interactive adventures whose impact on behavior earns them the title of serious games,” said Randolph Hall, Vice President of Research at USC.

Attendees will be able to interact with new developments from a number of USC schools and centers, including the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), the USC School of Cinematic Arts, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the USC Shoah Foundation, and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Presentations will include:

• Paul Debevec, winner of a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for his work in rendering digital faces, will present on ICT’s latest innovations, including the Light Stage system, which uses specialized algorithms to perfectly reproduce an actor’s appearance and movements digitally. Debevec will also present his team’s work on holographic video conferencing.
• Stephen Smith, executive director of the Shoah Foundation, will demonstrate New Dimensions in Testimony, a collaborative project with ICT to capture stories from Holocaust survivors by combining new interview content with advanced filming, voice-recognition processing, and display technologies that will allow students to engage in dialogue with virtual survivors for years to come.
• Researchers from the School of Cinematic Arts will present work on serious games from the Game Innovation Lab, showing how such games are changing human behavior. The Game Innovation Lab is part of USC Games, ranked by the Princeton Review and GamePro Media as the number one game design program in North America in 2012.
• Jonathan Taplin of the Annenberg Innovation Lab will discuss Sentimeter, a Twitter sentiment analysis project, which allows computers to read and interpret huge chunks of data from Twitter in real time. This approach promises to provide more accurate measurement of television ratings as well as other metrics important to marketers and advertisers.
• Cyrus Shahabi of the Integrated Media Systems Center in the Viterbi School of Engineering will present on the growing field of geo-crowdsourcing and describe a future where ”big data” from traffic sensors and other sources is used and interpreted in new ways.

The day will include live demonstrations of technologies discussed during the event, as well as additional projects under development at USC:

• Digital Holocaust Survivor – A collaboration between ICT and the Shoah Foundation, the stories and experiences of a survivor of the Holocaust have been forever captured in 3D video and allow anyone to interview and interact with the virtual survivor
• iOS Virtual Reality – Virtual reality apps on your iPhone or iPad that utilize a snap-on immersive viewer take the user to the surface of Mars
• ELITE Military Training – Used by both the US Army and Navy, this is an interactive system that helps to train officers on how to solve problems and issues between squad- and crew-mates
• USC Games – Demos from the number one video game program in the country.

GLIMPSE is an invite-only media event and space is limited. Members of the media interested in attending the event are encouraged to RSVP by contacting glimpse@triplepointpr.com by the close of business on Thursday, January 24.

About GLIMPSE 
GLIMPSE is an exclusive Digital Technology Showcase featuring demonstrations of cutting-edge technology and research at the University of Southern California focused on shaping the future, enhancing the present, and preserving the past. Hosted on Jan. 29, 2013, at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, the one-day event will exhibit USC faculty innovations including facial recognition software for lighting design and interactions with digital Holocaust survivors, among other advancements. GLIMPSE exemplifies USC’s commitment to digital research across disciplines showcasing research from the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), the USC School of Cinematic Arts, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the USC Shoah Foundation, and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

 Media Contact

Andrew Karl, TriplePoint for USC
akarl@triplepointpr.com
(203) 314-6255