UC Building Multimedia Bridge Between Researchers, Industry

As 1998 winds down, the University of California is ramping up a new program to encourage collaboration between academic researchers and the state’s burgeoning multimedia industry.

The Digital Media Innovation Program, affectionately known as DiMI, will facilitate research on topics ranging from fingerprint identification to agricultural systems that track pesticides, fertilizer and water with satellite images. Ultimately, the partnerships are expected to help businesses grow and create jobs in California--already home to more than 30% of the country’s multimedia companies.

The multimedia research program makes $1.5 million in research funds available each year if they are matched by corporate partners. Since the program’s inauguration in June, companies have pledged $4 million in research funds.

“This will broaden the scope of research for the University of California,” said JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, a UC Santa Barbara music professor and DiMI’s inaugural director.

Researchers from all nine UC campuses--along with the Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories--are available to work with companies on multimedia projects in agriculture, art, bioengineering, education, health, space science and other areas. A dozen projects have been funded so far with DiMI grants of between $25,000 and $250,000, Kuchera-Morin said.

Two of them are at UCLA under the direction of physics professor Maha Ashour-Abdalla, who is also director of the school’s Center for Digital Innovation. One project, co-funded by Sun Microsystems, is developing Java programs that move faster over computer networks and can be used by schools for self-paced learning. The other project, co-funded by Sony Pictures Entertainment, is developing intelligent agents that can guide visitors through a virtual reality environment and update databases.

“I couldn’t do these projects without DiMI,” said Ashour-Abdalla, who is using $285,000 in corporate research funds, plus $70,000 in Sun equipment.

In UC San Diego’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, professor Mohan Trivedi is using a DiMI grant--matched by Sony and Compaq Computer--to create a computer that uses a camera and microphones to track activity in a room. Compaq is interested in using the research to make human-computer interactions more natural, while Sony expects to apply the work to develop new videoconferencing systems, he said.

Without DiMI, university researchers would be unable to work on such focused problems, said Bir Bhanu, electrical engineering professor at UC Riverside and director of the school’s Center for Research in Intelligent Systems. “DiMI projects have a very close relationship with industry,” Bhanu said. Kuchera-Morin said she expects UC to double its DiMI funding commitment by this time next year.

After all, she said, “This is a national center for media innovation.”