Achievement

On March 11, 2009, Electrical Engineering trainees Jim Kleban and Emily Moxley delivered a presentation on SpiritTagger as part of the UCSB Geography Department’s weekly colloquium. Their talk proposed using geographic tags as an innovative method for labeling photographs from large data sets such as Flickr.com. Given a new photograph and the location where it was taken, they can automatically suggest labels which capture the spirit of the place. By simultaneously considering both the tag data and content in the images, the labels they suggest outperform state-of-the-art image annotation systems. Jim Kleban remarked on the significance of the talk and how memorable it was, noting that he and Emily had to consciously change their vocabulary to talk to the Geographers. 'They asked different questions that helped us take the project in new directions,' he said. This seminar was demonstrative of our program’s success in bridging academic disciplines.