Biographies

Sebastiano Battiato was born in Catania, Italy, in 1972. He received the degree in Computer Science (summa cum laude) in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics in 1999. From 1999 to 2003 he has leaded the ”Imaging” team c/o STMicroelectronics in Catania. Since 2004 he has been a researcher at Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Catania. His research interests include image enhancement and processing, image coding and camera imaging technology. He published more than 90 papers in international journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. He has authored 2 books and is a co-inventor of about 15 international patents. He is a reviewer for several international journals and he has been regularly a member of numerous international conference committees. He has participated in many international and national research projects. He is an Associate Editor of the SPIE Journal of Electronic Imaging (Specialty: digital photography and image compression). He is a director (and cofounder) of the International Computer Vision Summer School. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE. For more details see (http://www.dmi.unict.it/ battiato)

Arcangelo R. Bruna

Arcangelo R. Bruna received the degree in Electronic Engineering (summa cum laude) in 1998 at the University of Palermo. First he worked in a telecommunication company in Rome. He joined STMicroelectronics in 1999 where he works in the Advanced System Technology (AST) Catania Lab - Italy. Today he leads the Image Generation Pipeline and Codecs group and his research interests are in the field of image acquisition, processing and enhancement. He published several patents and papers in international conferences and journals.

Giuseppe Messina

Giuseppe Messina was born in Crhange, France, in 1972. He received his MS degree in Computer Science in 2000 at the University of Catania doing a thesis about Statistical Methods for Textures Discrimination. Since March 2001 he has been working at STMicroelectronics in the Advanced System Technology (AST) Imaging Group as Software Design Senior Engineer II / PL. Since 2007 he is Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Catania accomplishing a research in Information Forensic by Image/ Video Analysis. He is member of the Image Processing Laboratory, at the University of Catania. His research interests are in the field of Image Analysis e Image Quality Enhancement. He is author of about several papers and patents in Image Processing field. He is a reviewer for several international journals and international conferences. He is an IEEE member.

Giovanni Puglisi

Giovanni Puglisi was born in Acireale, Italy, in 1980. He received his degree in Computer Science Engineering (summa cum laude) from Catania University in 2005 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2009. He is currently contract researcher at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and member of IPLab (Image Processing Laboratory) at the University of Catania. His research interests include video stabilization, artificial mosaic generation, animal behavior and raster-to-vector conversion techniques. He is the author of several papers on these activities.

Image Processing Lab (http://iplab.dmi.unict.it)

IPLab research group is located at Dipartimento di Matematica ed Informatica in Catania. The scientific knowledge of the group is on Computer Graphics, Multimedia, Image processing, Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision. The group has a good expertise in the overall digital camera pipeline (e.g., acquisition and post acquisition processing) as well as a good and in-depth knowledge of the recognition of scene categorization field. This is confirmed by the numerously research paper, within the area of image processing in single sensor domain (in acquisition and post acquisition time) as well as different works relatively the semantic analysis of images content, to drive some image processing tasks such as image enhancement. Moreover, the collaboration between members of the Catania unit and industrial company leaders in single sensor imaging (e.g., STMicroelectronics) has already done the possibility of transferring to the industry (pre-competitive research) the knowledge acquired in academic research facilitating the industry in producing new advanced products and patents. A joint research lab IPLab-STMicroelectronics, has been recently created where researchers coming from both partners work together on imaging research topics. More specifically, 2 Ph.D. students in Computer Science (XXIII Ciclo Dottorato in Informatica - Universit`a di Catania) have received financial support by STMicroelectronics to investigate about ”Methodologies and Algorithms for Image Quality Enhancement for Embedded Systems”. The group published more than 100 papers on topics related to the previous mentioned disciplines. Moreover the IPLab group established a number of international relationships with academic/industrial partners for research purpose. In the last years the group organized the ”Fourth Conference Eurographics Italian Chapter 2006” and the ”International Computer Vision Summer School 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010” (http://www.dmi.unict.it/icvss).

Advanced System Technology - Catania Lab - STMicroelectronics (http://www.st.com)

Advanced System Technology (AST) is the STMicroelectronics organization in charge of system level research and innovation. Active since 1998, AST responds to the need to strengthen the position of STMicroelectronics as a leading-edge system on chip company. The AST Catania Lab and, in particular, the Imaging Group, works on research and innovation in the field of imaging processing. Its mission is to acquire digital pictures with superior Performance/Cost using advanced image processing methodologies, to extend the acquisition capability of imaging devices through the development of new applications and to determine the computational power, the required bandwidth, the flexibility and the whole imaging engine. Its members have long experience in image algorithms, documented also by many patents and scientific publications. Primarily, through active contacts and collaborations with several universities and a dedicated joint lab with the IPLab of Catania University, they have concretized and made effective the link between academic and industrial R&D.