Completed: Summer School for Multimedia Technologies - Diogenes 2.0

The curtains have closed on another chapter of the Summer School for Multimedia Technologies, this year named "Diogenes 2.0 – Detection of People in Indoor Spaces". Hosted by DIPteam and the Institute of Electronics, this year's edition took place from September 25 to September 30, 2023.
In the competition, 16 undergraduate students teamed up to form six teams of 2 or 3 members each. Throughout the school's action-packed days, the students dove into the worlds of multimedia technologies, computer vision, and deep learning, expanding their theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Each team rolled up their sleeves and trained a neural network for people detection, and an algorithm for post-processing the results.
The grand finale was a showdown on the last day of the summer school, where students tested their creations on six challenging videos featuring the competitors themselves as lead actors. The competition was fierce, and victory hung in the balance. The winners' reveal happened on October 4, followed by a celebration and casual gathering of the participants, organizers, and lecturers at one of the local cafes.

Cheers to the champions: Blagoja Savevski, Ivan Jovanovski, and Jovan Stojkovski!
Securing the second spot with a mere 3% difference in accuracy are Tijana Petkovska, and Filip Bojadzievski.
Claiming the third position with a 7% difference in accuracy are Ana Sofronievska, and Kristijan Danov.

Take a look at the photos below to see the organizers, participants and winners!
For a visual journey behind the scenes of the competition and the award ceremony, click here.
Stay tuned for more adventures and learning experiences at the Summer School of Multimedia Technologies with DIPteam!

The participants and organizers of the Diogenes 2.0 Summer School

The winning team: Blagoja Savevski, Ivan Jovanovski, and Jovan Stojkovski

Second place: Tijana Petkovska, and Filip Bojadzievski

Third place: Ana Sofronievska, and Kristijan Danov

09/10/2023 - 14:00

Summer School for Multimedia Technologies 2023 – Diogenes 2.0

Join us for the Summer School on Multimedia Technologies, happening from September 25 to September 30, 2023.
Our program covers lectures by FEEIT professors on the topics of digital image and sound processing, as well as image analysis using machine learning methods. Through the summer school, you'll have an opportunity to acquire skills in the field of signal processing, as well as design and application of neural networks for image analysis, with hands-on experience in Python.
The summer school also brings a competitive edge, incorporating the presentation and grading of the students' final projects. Upon completion of the school’s program, you will be awarded 1,5 ECTS credits.

Ready to dive in? Apply here.
Explore the school's topic and the proposed task in more detail here.
View the detailed schedule of the summer school here.

12/09/2023 - 15:34

Silver medal in Image Matching Challenge 2023

The 3DIPTeam, consisting of talented students Jovan Kamchev, Simona Toshevska, Ivona Mircheska, and Tiana Paunoska, earned a silver medal in this year's Image Matching Challenge, hosted by Goggle Research, claiming the 48th position among 494 competing teams on the Kaggle platform.

In the era of ubiquitous phone cameras, these devices stand out as the primary sources of photographs that capture the world around us. Particularly with famous landmarks, there is an abundance of photos taken at the same location by various people, capturing the objects from different viewpoints and conditions. By combining all these photos, a more comprehensive, three-dimensional view of any given object can be created. The competition was aimed at developing a time-efficient algorithm for precise reconstruction of a 3D scene from photos taken from various angles, under different lighting and weather conditions.
Through research and modification of previous solutions that perform extraction and matching of key points in images and forming a 3D point cloud, the students developed an algorithm for 3D scene reconstruction which earned them the silver medal in the competition.

Congratulations on this remarkable achievement!

The silver medalists: Jovan Kamchev, Simona Toshevska, Ivona Mircheska, and Tiana Paunoska

10/06/2023 - 09:00

Completed: Summer School for Multimedia Technologies 2022 - Diogenes

Another chapter of the Summer School for Multimedia Technologies, this year titled Diogenes – Detection of People in Indoor Spaces, has concluded. The event, organized by DIPteam and the Institute of Electronics and proudly supported by FabLab, took place from September 26 to October 1, 2022.
Throughout the school's activities, the talented final-year students delved into the realms of multimedia technologies and computer vision, expanding their theoretical knowledge and honing practical skills.
But the real highlight was the competition held in the school's closing days. The challenge of detecting people in indoor spaces was the ultimate test for our students, who applied their newfound knowledge to create and implement deep neural networks for object detection. Five teams, each consisting of 2 or 3 members, created object detectors and post-processing algorithms, and tested their algorithms with creative videos recorded by the participants themselves. The competition was intense, and victory was uncertain as all teams put significant effort into their algorithms.
The winners, Anastasija Markovska, Jovan Kamchev, and Daria Najdenovska, announced on October 3, earned well-deserved applause. To wrap up this fun journey, participants, organizers, and lecturers joined for a celebration and casual gathering at a local café.
Stay tuned for more exciting adventures and learning experiences at the Summer School for Multimedia Technologies with DIPteam!

The participants and organizers of the Summer School of Multimedia Ttechnologies

The winning team: Anastasija Markovska, Jovan Kamchev, and Daria Najdenovska

04/10/2022 - 09:00

Summer School for Multimedia Technologies 2022 - Diogenes

Join us for the Summer School for Multimedia Technologies, happening from September 26 to October 1, 2022.
Our program covers exciting lectures by FEEIT professors on the topics of digital image and sound processing, as well as image analysis using machine learning. Through the summer school, you'll have an opportunity to acquire skills in the field of signal processing, as well as design and application of neural networks for image analysis, with hands-on experience in Python.
The summer school also brings a competitive edge, incorporating the presentation and grading of the students' final projects. Upon completion of the school’s program, you will be awarded 1,5 ECTS credits.

Ready to dive in? Apply here.
Explore the summer school's topic and the proposed task in more detail here.
View the detailed schedule of the summer school here.

12/09/2022 - 11:34

LEOS 2022

The conference LEOS2022 (Summer Symposium on Electronics and Signal Processing 2022) will be held on June 24 and 25 in Hotel Panorama in Krushevo. This year, the Institute of Electronics organizes this conference in honor of three of our colleagues who celebrate 75 years of life and work, they are prof. Sofija Bogdanova, prof. Ljupcho Panovski and prof. Goce Arsov. Welcome as authors or listeners, through science and socializing to pay tribute to our doyens.

23/06/2022 - 14:35

Lecture Series by Prof. Hiroya Fujisaki

In September 2016, we had the honor of hosting Prof. Hiroya Fujisaki, an esteemed professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and one of the world's leading researchers in intonation. During his visit, the professor delivered a series of three lectures.

The first lecture, titled "Interaction Among Psychology, Physics, and Phonetics in Creating Tonal Features in Speech Across Different Languages," took place on September 21, 2016, at the closing of the Summer School on Multimedia Technologies. In the lecture, Prof. Fujisaki delved into the details of how intonation is generated from various aspects, presenting his intonation model known as the Fujisaki model. About 25attendees joined the lecture at the Conference Hall of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies (FEEIT). Find the presentation slides here.

ВOn September 22, 2016, Prof. Fujisaki delivered the second lecture as a keynote speaker at the International Conference ETAI 2016, organized by the ETAI Association and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies at the University of St. Cyril and Methodius – Skopje, Macedonia. Titled "Principles and Design of an Intelligent System for Delivering Academic Information via Human-Machine Spoken Dialogue," the lecture shared the professor's experiences from a significant research project he led in Japan. Presentation slides from this lecture can be found here.

The third lecture, "Challenges and Perspectives in Speech Language Processing," organized by the joint departments ED/IM/SSC (electronic components, instrumentation and measurement, semiconductor circuits) and SP/EMB (signal processing and engineering in medicine and biology) of the Macedonian section of IEEE, took place on September 26, 2016, in the conference hall at FEEIT. Prof. Fujisaki presented the concept of "spoken language" as opposed to the term "written language." Additionally, he defined the field of "Spoken Language Processing," where speech is analyzed from both a signal, and a code perspective. The abstract of the lecture and a brief biography of the speaker can be found here, and the slides can be found here.

The lecture series by Prof. Fujisaki in Macedonia and Serbia were supported by the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA), where he served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the 2016-2017 period, the ETAI Association, as well as the joint departments ED/IM/SSC and SP/EMB of the Macedonian section of IEEE.

Until our next encounter,
Branislav Gerazov

11/10/2016 - 08:46

Summer School for Multimedia Technologies 2016 - Talking Heads

Join us for the Summer School on Multimedia Technologies, happening from September 12 to September 16, 2016.
Our program covers exciting lectures by FEEIT professors on the topics of digital processing of sound, speech, images, and video. Additionally, dive into engaging talks on the digital creation of multimedia content. During the summer school, you will have an opportunity to get hands-on experience with signal processing using Matlab. The summer school also brings a competitive edge, incorporating the presentation and grading of the students' final projects. Upon completion of the school’s program, you will be awarded 1.5 ECTS credits.

Ready to jump in? Apply here.
Explore the summer school's topics and task in more detail here.
View the detailed schedule of the summer school here.

09/06/2016 - 23:30

IEEE Lectures: Biofeedback and Brainduino

Two lectures titled "Biofeedback - Principles and Applications" by Dr. Silvana Markovska-Simoska and "Challenges and Aspects of Building Electroencephalography" by Mr. Silver Kuusik were held on May 17, 2016.
Global achievements in the use of biofeedback techniques for recognizing and treating a range of psychophysiological disorders, especially those related to stress, were presented in the first lecture. Additionally, the notable successes resulting from two decades of applying these techniques in Macedonia were highlighted. In the second lecture, challenges in the design and implementation of EEG devices were presented, with a particular emphasis on creating high-quality yet cost-effective devices for home use with high quality but low cost, aligning with the principles of open hardware and open software movements. Both lectures took place in the Conference Hall at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies and drew an audience of approximately 25 attendees.
You can find abstracts of the lectures and short biographies of the speakers here and here.
You can find the lecture slides here and here.

Until next time!
Branislav Gerazov

05/20/2016 - 18:16