Ning Hu

ADDR. : COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
        CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
        5000 FORBES AVENUE
        PITTSBURGH, PA 15213
PHONE : (O) 412-268-1557 (M) 412-401-8341
EMAIL : ninghu@cs.cmu.edu
WEB   : http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ninghu

Multimedia (especially Music / Audio) Information Retrieval and Data Mining, Machine Learning, Audio Analysis and Computer Music

2002 - Present                       Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

                                              Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
                                              Advisor: Roger B. Dannenberg
                                              Granted M.S. in Computer Science (May 2003)

2000 - 2002                          School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

                                              Master, Entertainment Technology

1996 – 2000                          Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

                                              B.E., Computer Science and Technology

2000 – Present                       Computer Music Group, Carnegie Mellon University

• Music Information Retrieval (MIR)
• Investigated and designed the retrieval techniques for "Query-by-Humming" IR system and algorithms (Dynamic Programming and Hidden Markov Model) for melodic similarity comparison
• Collaborated to design interactive interfaces for future, intelligent music browsers and databases
• Automatic Audio Analysis
• Researched the polyphonic structural analysis of music by using adaptive Dynamic Programming on audio (spectrum, chroma) and / or symbolic (MIDI) representations
• Designed and implemented Hidden Markov Model for precise audio alignment
• Computer Music
• Designed and developed a high-quality piano synthesizer and a most popular windows IDE for Nyquist (a sound synthesis & composition language)

2001 – 2002                          Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University

• Training for Physical Tasks in Virtual Environments: Tai Chi
• Collaborated to develop a wireless virtual reality system that combines full-body real-time motion capture and wireless head-mounted display. A prototype full-body Tai Chi training application was also built with it
• Solely responsible for Researching and implementing real-time filters (damping filter, low pass filter, Kalman filter, etc.) for noisy motion capture data, and analyzing Tai Chi experiment data through various statistical approaches

1999 – 2000                          Human Interaction & Media Integration Lab, Tsinghua University

• MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards research and applications
• Independently implemented a simple yet working MPEG-1 video surveillance system in Visual C++ as the diploma project
• Completed the thesis about MPEG standards research and algorithm improvements on video data compression and object tracking

2002                                      Summer Research Intern                                     Language Technology Institute, CMU

• Took part in the development of JAVELIN, an open-domain question answering system, and prepared it for the TREC 2002 question-answering track.
• Solely responsible for the development and improvement on one of the main components Request Filler, which identifies and scores answers from a set of potentially relevant documents. Major contributions include component expansion for new answer types, feature vectors evaluation and selection, decision tree classifier (c4.5) training and improvement, new classifier (K-Nearest-Neighbor implementing KD-trees) development, data and result analysis, module maintenance, etc.

1999 - 2000                          Part-time programmer                                        www.Chinaren.com

• Independently developed a multi-player online game engine in JAVA
• Took part in the development of several JAVA online games

Spring, 2003                          Graduate Database System course project         Carnegie Mellon University

• Ning Hu and Minglong Shao, "Kalman-Tree: an Index Structure on Spatio-Temporal Data"
• The project proposes a modified R-tree indexing structure (KR-tree) targeting the future location estimation problem in spatio-temporal databases, by integrating the useful estimator Kalman filter.

Fall, 2002                              Grad. Computer Architecture course project     Carnegie Mellon University

• Ning Hu and Vahe Poladian, "Characterizing and Enhancing the Performance of Sound Synthesis Applications on Pentium III"
• The final project report was approved "publishable" by the course instructor Professor Seth Goldstein

Spring, 2002                          Computer Animation course project                   Carnegie Mellon University

• Ning Hu, Philo Chua, Kevin Auyoung, "Musically Interactive Rendered Animation (MIRA)"
• Built an animated figure that dances on stage with the rhythm / music using an existing set of motion capture data. Main techniques involved are Motion Capture, Motion Blending, Beat Tracking, Non-Photorealistic Rendering

2001                                      Earth Theater project                                         Entertainment Technology CTR, CMU

• Collaborated to create an interactive and educational virtual reality show for the Earth Theater at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh
• Personally in charge of sound design and the implementation of a networking Client / Server program dealing with spatialized audio effect

2000                                      "Jam-O-Drum" project                                       Entertainment Technology CTR, CMU

• Collaborated to develop new experiences for "Jam-O-Drum", a musical interaction device invented by Tina Blaine(Bean). Our project was exhibited on both SIGGRAPH 2001 and Interface 2001.
• My contributions include brain-storming and developing interactive games for "Jam-O-Drum" on Macintosh in C++, music composition and sound design

Fall, 2003                              Teaching Assistant                                              Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

• 15-781 Graduate Machine Learning

Fall, 2002                              Teaching Assistant                                              Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

• 15-392 Introduction to Computer Music

Summer, 1998                       Teaching Assistant                                              Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

• JAVA Programming
• C Programming

2002 – Present                       Doctorate Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University

2000 – 2002                          Graduate Research Scholarship, Carnegie Mellon University

1996 – 2000                          First Class Scholarship for outstanding students every year

1996                                      First Prize of the 96' National Olympiad In Informatics, rank top 1 in Hainan Province

1999 – 2000                          Vice Director, Student Council of Tsinghua University

1996 – 2000                          Alto saxophone player, Marching Band, Tsinghua University

                                              Conductor, Computer Science Department Chorus, Tsinghua Univ.

• The Musart Testbed for Query-By-Humming Evaluation

  Dannenberg, Birmingham, Tzanetakis, Meek, Ning Hu, Pardo, Proc. 4th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), 2003

  Also to appear in Computer Music Journal, 2004

• Polyphonic Audio Matching and Alignment for Music Retrieval

  Ning Hu, Roger B. Dannenberg and George Tzanetakis, Proc. IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics (WASPAA), 2003

• Polyphonic Audio Matching for Score Following and Intelligent Audio Editors

  Roger B. Dannenberg and Ning Hu, Proc. Int. Computer Music Conference (ICMC), 2003

• Toward an Intelligent Editor for Jazz Music

  George Tzanetakis, Ning Hu and Roger B. Dannenberg, Proc. IEEE Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services (WIAMIS), 2003

• Training for Physical Tasks in Virtual Environments: Tai Chi

  Chua, Crivella, Daly, Ning Hu, Schaaf, Ventura, Camill, Hodgins, Pausch, Proc. IEEE Virtual Reality (VR), 2003

• The JAVELIN Question-Answering System at TREC 2002

  Nyberg, Mitamura, Carbonell, Callan, Collins-Thompson, Czuba, Duggan, Hiyakumoto, Ning Hu, Huang, Ko, Lita, Murtagh, Pedro and Svoboda, Proc. TREC 11, Nov 2002

• Pattern Discovery Techniques for Music Audio

  Roger B. Dannenberg and Ning Hu, Proc. 3rd International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), 2002

• A Probabilistic Model of Melodic Similarity

  Ning Hu, Roger B. Dannenberg and Ann L. Lewis, Proc. International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), 2002

• Discovering Musical Structure in Audio Recordings

  Roger B. Dannenberg and Ning Hu, Proc. 2nd Int. Conference in Music & Artificial Intelligence (ICMAI), 2002. Also appeared in the book Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 2445

• A Comparison of Melodic Database Retrieval Techniques Using Sung Queries

  Ning Hu and Roger B. Dannenberg, Proc. Second ACM / IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital libraries (JCDL), 2002

• Languages:     C / C++, Java, Pascal, Python, Perl, LISP, SQL, 80x86 / Alpha Assembly
• OS:                 Windows 9x / NT / 2000 / XP, Linux / Unix, DOS
• IDE:                GNU GCC, Microsoft Visual Studio (Visual C++, Visual J++, Visual Basic), Matlab, Delphi, Borland JBuilder
• API / SDK:     DirectX, OpenGL, WinSock / Berkeley Socket API, MFC/Win32 API, Windows multimedia system SDK