Funding, Grants & Awards
Penn State Researcher Developing Educational Tools To Help Fight Digital Piracy
Vishal Monga, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Penn State University, is working on a method
of analyzing images, audio files, videos and documents to prevent piracy, and he
plans to develop a video game to help his students test piracy methods in an
effort to combat the illegal online activity.
Monga received a five-year grant worth $500,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund the
endeavor. His project, "CAREER: Optimization Based Methods for Robust Pattern
Recognition in Time-Series Data," involves using theory and algorithms to
analyze images, audio files, video files, financial records and health care
records to prevent piracy of those files. More specifically, he will use "convex
optimization theory and algorithms in signal and image processing in image
classification and recognition, computational imaging and robust signal
hashing," according to information from Penn State.
According to Monga, it's difficult to catch digital pirates online. "The
proposed research enables them to be caught," he said in a prepared statement.
"If Sony or Columbia Pictures suspect their video has been illegally uploaded,
this will help them find out who uploaded it and put a stop to it."
Monga will partner with Penn State's Educational Gaming Commons to develop a video game for his students.
According to Monga, the game will let his students "see how the algorithms
they're working on can be applied to real-world applications." From there, Monga
and his students will integrate the ideas in their research to help fight
piracy.
Monga's research interests include convex optimization methods in imaging,
image processing and signal/image classification. He was granted the award
through the NSF's Faculty Early
Career Development Program (CAREER), which supports junior faculty who
conduct outstanding research and demonstrate excellence in teaching and
successfully integrate both.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].
