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An NUS School of Computing (SoC) research project aimed at
easing the burden of information retrieval for educationists and
students has clinched a prestigious grant. Worth more than
US$58,000 in total value, the grant is given by HP to higher
education institutions to promote innovations in teaching and
learning. Only 14 institutions from around the world have been
selected in 2006 to receive the HP Digital Publishing for
University Teaching and Learning grant, which provides each
selected institution with over US$43,000 in HP technology and
US$15,000 in cash.
Associate Professor Tan Chew Lim, Director of the Centre for
Information Mining and Extraction (CHIME) in SoC, is the
Principal Investigator (PI) for the project. Entitled ‘Document
Information Mining for Digital Libraries’, the project is
expected to generate three main outcomes over 18 months: new
techniques on document image analysis and information search, a
document image search engine, and a full fledged educational
resource portal.
Associate Professor Tan is actively involved in research on
methods for improving information retrieval from document
images. For instance, current text recognition software requires
that text be scanned from a flat page. Problems arise when a
page from a thick book is to be scanned as the book cannot be
opened flat because of the thick spine. The text nearer the
spine would then appear on a curved rather than flat surface,
and the text on the curved portions would then be ‘misread’ by
the software. Associate Professor Tan and his research students
devise solutions such as techniques that take the curvature of
portions of the page near the spine into consideration, and
pre-process the affected texts before they are handled by
standard text recognition methods.
Associate Professor Tan’s research efforts in document image
analysis and recognition techniques are complemented by those of
his co-PI, Assistant Professor Kan Min-Yen. Dr Kan’s efforts
centre on building and enhancing a document image search engine.
He has led efforts to set up mirrors of the CiteSeer computer
science digital library in SoC. The library consists of over
700,000 scholarly documents, which are used extensively by
students and faculty alike. Dr Kan currently teaches a course on
Digital Libraries, targeted at advanced undergraduates and
beginning graduate students who wish to understand real-world
issues in building, using and maintaining large volumes of
information in digital libraries. His involvement and findings
in the project would enrich the learning of the students. The
grant equipment would also help with the course in coming up
with novel methodologies for learning and disseminating
information.
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Project collaborator Associate
Professor Danny Poo takes care of the third aspect of the
project – developing a full fledged educational resource portal.
He is spearheading a large-scale project on building a
repository of websites and structured contents for the Singapore
education sector. Towards that end, he has already set up an
Education Taxonomy Portal, or E-TAP, which helps school teachers
and students and students navigate and look for information that
they need more efficiently.
Further details on E-TAP may be
found at:
http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~dpoo/res_etap.html.
The CHIME website is at
http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/labs/chime/ (for CHIME), and
the CiteSeer site is at:
http://citeseer.comp.nus.edu.sg/cs.
The 2006 HP Digital Publishing for Teaching and Learning grant
is awarding a total of some US$812,000 to 14 universities in
nine countries. From 2004 to 2006, HP has committed more than
US$36 million in grants to more than 650 schools worldwide to
support HP’s broader education goal of transforming teaching and
learning through the integration of technology. “HP believes
digital publishing technology plays an important role in
transforming teaching and learning,” said Bess Stephens, Vice
President, Philanthropy and Education, HP. “Faculty members will
benefit from the technology by using it to tailor content to the
individual student; students will benefit by receiving
rich-media content not found in traditional textbooks.” More
information about HP’s philanthropy efforts is available at
http://www.hp.com/go/grants.
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