Biography

John R. Smith is Senior Manager of the Intelligent Information Management Department at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.  He leads a research department addressing technical challenges in database systems and information management.  His team includes the Database Research Group and Intelligent Information Analysis Group.  In addition to his managerial responsibilities, Dr. Smith currently serves as Chair, Data Management research area at Watson and IBM Research Campus Relationship Manager for Columbia University.

From 2001-2004, Dr. Smith served as Chair of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29 WG11 Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Multimedia Description Schemes group with responsibilities in the development of MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards. Dr. Smith also served as co-Project Editor for following parts of MPEG-7 standard: "MPEG-7 Multimedia Description Schemes," "MPEG-7 Conformance," "MPEG-7 Extraction and Use" and "MPEG-7 Schema Definition."  Dr. Smith also serves on the Advisory Committee for NIST TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation. 

Dr. Smith received his M. Phil and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 1994 and 1997, respectively (visit his page at Columbia University).

Awards:

  • External:

    Wall Street Journal 2004 Innovation Award for MARVEL Multimedia Analysis and Retrieval System, Nov. 2004

    IEEE Multimedia Prize Paper Award given to the best paper in the field of Multimedia published in the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (over four-year period), 2003.

    Eliahu I. Jury Award for outstanding achievement as a graduate student in the areas of systems communication or signal processing, 1997.

  • IBM:

    IBM Corporate Environmental Affairs Excellence Award, 2003

    IBM Research Division Award for Content Adaptation Framework, 2001

    IBM Outstanding Innovation Award for SPIRE: Spatial Image Content-based Retrieval Engine, 2000.

    Professional Activities (2003-2005):

  • Standards Positions:

    Chair, MPEG Multimedia Description Schemes Group, Intl. Standards Organization (ISO), Mar. 2001 – July 2004

    Deputy Chair, MPEG Multimedia Description Schemes Group, Intl. Standards Organization (ISO), Nov. 1999 – Mar. 2001.

    Technical Chair, MPEG-7, National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS) L3.1, American National Standards Instit. (ANSI), Sept. 2000 – July 2004.

    Chair, MPEG-7 Conceptual Modeling Ad Hoc Group, Intl. Standards Organization (ISO), July 1999 – 2002.

    Editor, MPEG-7 Multimedia Content Description Interface Standard, Intl. Standards Organization (ISO), March 1999 – present.

     

  • Conference Chairs:

    Co-General Chair, Intl. Conf. on Image and Video Retrieval, 2006.

    Co-General Chair, ACM Multimedia Information Retrieval (MIR) Workshop, 2005.

    Co-Program Chair, IEEE Intl. Conf. on Multimedia & Expo., 2005

    Co-Program Chair, ACM Multimedia 2003, Nov. 2003

    Co-Chair, SPIE Internet Multimedia Management Systems, 2001-present

    Co-Chair, IEEE Workshop on Content-based Access for Image and Video Libraries (CBAIVL), 2000-2001.

    General Chair, Watson Workshop on Multimedia, June 2003.

    Program Area Chair, IEEE Intl. Conf. on Multimedia & Expo., 2002-2004

  • Editorial:

    Associate Editor, IEEE Trans. Multimedia, 2003-present.

    Standards Editor, IEEE Multimedia Magazine, 2003-present.

    Editorial Board Member for ACM Computers in Entertainment, 2003-present.

    Board Member for Kluwer Intl. Journal of Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2003-present.

    Co-Guest Editor, IEEE Trans. Multimedia, Special Issue on “MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework,” April 2005.

    Co-Guest Editor, Journal of Pattern Recognition, Special Issue on “Image Understanding for Digital Photographs,” Elsevier, 2004.

    Co-Guest Editor, Journal of Visual Communications and Image Representation, Special Issue on “Multimedia Database Management Systems,” Vol. 15, No. 3, Sept. 2004.

    Co-Guest Editor, International Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology, Special issue on “Multimedia Content Description and Video Compression,” 2003.

    Co-Guest Editor, IEEE Trans. Circuits and Syst. For Video Technology, Special Issue on “Conceptual and Dynamical Aspects of Multimedia Content Description,” 2002.

  • Committees:

    Technical Committee, IEEE Multimedia Signal Processing (class of 2005).

    Advisory Committee, NIST TRECVID, 2003 – present.

    Executive Committee, ARDA Information Technology NRRC/NWRRC, 2003 – present.

    Program Area Chair, IEEE Intl. Conf. on Multimedia & Expo., 2002-2004

    Program Committee, ACM Multimedia, 1999-2004.

    Program Committee, SPIE/IS&T Storage and Retrieval for Image and Video Databases, 2001-present.

    Program Committee, ACM Workshop on Multimedia Information Retrieval, 2003 – present.

    Program Committee, ACM SIG Information Retrieval (SIGIR), 2003 – present.

    Program Committee, IEEE Intern. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 2003 – present.

    Program Committee, Intl,. Conf. on the World-Wide Web (WWW-2003), 2003 – present.

  • Standards Editing:

    Co-Project Editor, International Standard, "Information Technology – Multimedia content description interface – Part 10: Schema Definition," ISO/IEC 15398-9, First Edition, 2004.

    Co-Project Editor, International Standard, "Information Technology – Multimedia content description interface – Part 5: Multimedia Description Schemes," ISO/IEC 15398-5 COR/1, 2004.

    Co-Project Editor, International Standard, "Information Technology – Multimedia content description interface – Part 5: Multimedia Description Schemes," ISO/IEC 15398-5 AMD/1, 2004.

    Co-Project Editor, International Standard, "Information Technology – Multimedia content description interface – Part 5: Multimedia Description Schemes," ISO/IEC 15398-5, First Edition, 2003.

    Co-Project Editor, International Standard, "Information Technology – Multimedia content description interface – Part 7: Conformance," ISO/IEC 15398-5, First Edition, 2003.

    Co-Project Editor, International Standard, "Information Technology – Multimedia content description interface – Part 9: Extraction and Use," ISO/IEC 15398-9, First Edition, 2003.

  • Invited and Keynote Talks:

    “Lexicon Design for Multimedia Understanding,” IEEE Intl. Conference on Pattern Recognition, August 2004.  Invited talk.

    “Challenges of Video Indexing in Large Scale Video Databases,” IEEE Workshop on Interconnections within High-Speed Digital Systems, May 2004. Invited talk.

     “MPEG-21 Technologies for Digital Rights Management,” Jupiter Workshop on Digital Rights Management, April 2004. Invited talk.

    “MPEG-7 Multimedia Content Description Standard”, NAB-2003, Las Vegas, NV, 2003. Invited talk.

    “MPEG-7 Path for an Intelligent Multimedia Future,” IEEE International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing”, Las Vegas, NV, Apr., 2001.  Keynote talk.

    “Interoperable Content-based Access of Multimedia in Digital Libraries,” DELOS Network of Excellence Workshop on “Information seeking, searching and querying in digital libraries”, Zurich, Switzerland, Dec., 2000.

    “Universal Multimedia Access,” SPIE Photonics East, Multimedia Systems and Applications III, Boston, MA, Nov. 2000.

    “MPEG-7 Conceptual Model,” First MPEG-7 Awareness Event, Paris, France, Oct. 2000.

    “MPEG-7 Multimedia Description Standard,” IEEE Workshop on Content-based Access of Image and Video Libraries (CBAIVL), Fort Collins, Colorado, June, 1999.

    “MPEG-7 Design for Innovation,” Workshop on Image Access for Multimedia Information Systems (WIAMIS), Berlin, Germany, May, 1999. Keynote talk.

    “Multi-stage Classification of Images from Features and Related Text”, Fourth DELOS workshop, Pisa, Italy, Aug., 1997.

  • Major Conference Tutorials:

    J. R. Smith, A. Vetro, “Universal Multimedia Access,” IEEE Intl. Conf. on Multimedia and Expo (ICME-2004), July, 2004.

    H. Hellwagner, J. R. Smith, C. Timmerer, “The Future of Universal Multimedia Access on the Web”, 13th World Wide Web Conference (WWW-2004), May, 2004.

    P. Over and J. R. Smith, “NIST TREC Video Retrieval Benchmark,” ACM Multimedia (ACM MM-2003), Nov. 2003.

    M. Naphade, E. Chang, J. R. Smith, “Multimedia Semantics and Machine Learning,” IEEE Intl. Conf. on Multimedia & Expo (ICME-2003), Jul. 2003.

    J. R. Smith, “MPEG-7 Multimedia Content Description Standard,” IEEE Intl. Conf. on Multimedia & Expo (ICME-2002), Aug. 2002.

    J. R. Smith, “MPEG-7 Standard for Multimedia Databases,” ACM Intl. Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD-2001), May, 2001.

    U. Srinivasan and J. R. Smith, “Conceptual Modeling for Multimedia Applications and the Role of MPEG-7,” ACM Intl. Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER-2000), Oct., 2000.

    J. R. Smith, A. Puri, M. Tekalp, “MPEG-7 Multimedia Content Description Standard,” IEEE Intl. Conf. on Multimedia and Expo (ICME-2000), July, 2000.

    J. R. Smith, “MPEG-7 Audio-Visual Content Description,” Intl.. Conf. on Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS-99), July, 1999.

    J. R. Smith, “Models Bridging the Gap between Syntax and Semantics,” National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS), May, 1999.