报告题目：From Big Multimedia Data to Real-World Visual Search (& an introduction to the upcoming Alibaba Image Search Challenge) 

　　报告人：Senior Director: Xian-Sheng Hua (Alibaba Group) 

　　报告时间：2015年9月15日上午10点

    地点：自动化所智能化大厦三层第一会议室　　

    报告摘要（ABSTRACT）： 

　　Visual search has been studied for decades since 1990s and it was called “content-based image retrieval” in the beginning. It almost died in the early 21st century and then becomes very hot in recent years mainly due to the rapid development of distributed computing, high-dimensional indexing, deep learning and big data analytical techniques. Many visual search research prototypes and preliminary products are available to the public. However, is real-world visual search really coming? Have we solved all the big technical and non-technical challenges? Are semantic gaps and intention gaps still there, and do they really matter? How big data analyses and deep learning techniques can help here? Are people really using it and why do they want to use it? Which direction that visual search is going towards? What are still missing? In this talk, we will discuss all these questions based on a real-world visual search engine that has a considerable number of users. And we will also introduce the upcoming “Alibaba Large-Scale Image Search Challenge”, in which we will award more than 400K RMB in total to winning teams. 

　　报告人简介（BIOGRAPHY）： 

　　Dr Xian-Sheng Hua is a Researcher and Senior Director of Alibaba Group since 2015, leading the multimedia technology team in the Search Division. Before that, he was a senior researcher of Microsoft Research Redmond since 2013. He was a Principal Research and Development Lead in Multimedia Search for the Microsoft search engine, Bing, since 2011. Dr Hua received his BS in 1996 and PhD in 2001 from Peking University. He served or is now serving as associate editors of IEEE T-MM and ACM TIST. He was vice program chair, workshop organizer, senior TPC member and area chair, and demonstration, tutorial, and special session chairs and PC member of many more international conferences. He was honored as one of the recipients of the prestigious 2008 MIT Technology Review TR35 Young Innovator Award for his outstanding contributions to video search. He was named one of Global Entrepreneur's "Business Elites of People under 40 to Watch" in 2009.