CVSSP tops 2020 UK rankings in computer vision
Surrey’s Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) has seen off all the national competition in the annual Computer Science Rankings (CSR) – and it finished 3rd when rated against every other institution in Europe, too.
Computer vision: CVSSP is ranked 1st in the UK and 3rd in Europe for research in this area
Creative: CVSSP research in this area includes 4D immersive VR content production, performance capture and video-based animation
Healthcare: CVSSP investigates medical imaging technologies for cancer detection and machine learning in personalised care
Robotics: CVSSP examines a broad range of technologies related to visual human-machine interaction, including autonomous vehicles
Security: CVSSP investigates biometric and surveillance-related technologies such as facial recognition
Data: CVSSP addresses the application of AI for audio-visual information search, understanding and preservation
DIT: CVSSP's research aims to harness the power of distributed ledger technologies and AI beyond the financial sphere
The acclaimed research centre was rated 1st in the UK, finishing four places above University College London and 41 places above the University of Cambridge, in CSR’s 2020 league table for computer vision. This position is calculated by analysing research and publication data from the last ten years and placing academic institutions in an order of merit.
Perhaps more impressively, CVSSP was only beaten to the top position in Europe by Germany’s Max Planck Society and ETH Zurich in Switzerland, meaning it’s also rated the third-best establishment in Europe in this area.
This success follows the University of Surrey being ranked in first place for research culture in the 2020 Postgraduate Research Experience Survey.
Success story
It’s certainly a long way from 1986 when CVSSP was founded…
Back then winning awards wasn’t part of the agenda. The aim was to establish the Centre and quietly advance the state of the art in multimedia signal processing and computer vision.
Fast-forward 34 years and it’s a thriving community of more than 90 postgraduate research students, 40 post-doctoral researchers, and 20 academic research leads, who all have access to the latest cutting-edge technology. This includes a unique multiple camera audio-visual recording studio with 16 Ultra HD cameras, video-rate capture and processing, a 64-channel sound sphere, and robot vision platforms, including a new autonomous car testbed.
Non-academic industry partners also regularly visit to share business insights and knowledge with the research cohort.
Lewis Bridgeman, a third-year PhD student at CVSSP, isn’t surprised by the recent acclaim.
“The University has a great atmosphere, a nice campus and a great support structure for its PhD students,” he says. “It’s a great place to undertake a PhD in machine learning or machine perception. It has a diverse range of research groups all with their own areas of expertise.
“We have great Christmas parties, too!”
Bright future
Festive frolics aside, CVSSP won’t be relaxing too much and lose sight of its desire to achieve more success.
Adrian Hilton, Distinguished Professor of Computer Vision and Director of CVSSP, adds: “CVSSP achieving first place in the 2020 ranking for Computer Vision AI research is a fantastic recognition of the world-leading research across the centre’s activities.
“The centre is at the forefront of research in audio and visual AI for the benefit of society with impact in healthcare, security, robotics and entertainment. CVSSP is a thriving and inclusive research environment with a shared culture to contribute leading research advances and pioneer new technologies in collaboration with industry partners.”
Find out more about postgraduate research study at CVSSP.
