Projects

• Ph.D. Thesis
• Current Projects
• Past Project but Still Alive
• Past Projects (including MIRA movie)

• Automatic Audio Analysis

• Polyphonic structural analysis of music by using adaptive Dynamic Programming on audio (spectrum, chroma) and / or symbolic (MIDI) representations

• Design and implement a valid Hidden Markov Model for precise audio alignment

• Design a Neural Net Model to find better audio features for audio analysis.

• Application prototypes
  • Polyphonic accompniment
  • Audio information retrieval
  • Intelligent audio editor
  • Expressive performance analysis
  • ...

• 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
• Nyquist
  • Nyquist is a sound synthesis & composition language invented by Roger B. Dannenberg. It is based on a Lisp syntax. Nyquist is an elegant and powerful system based on functional programming
  • Implemented a piano synthesizer in Nyquist, which is one of the most commonly used Nyquist synthesizer. For detail reference see M4C
  • Designed and developed an windows IDE for Nyquist. So far it is the most popular Nyquist IDE
  • Took part in the work of debugging Nyquis

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

2002                                      Summer Research Internship                               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.

Spring, 2002                          Computer Animation course project                   Carnegie Mellon University

• Ning Hu, Philo Chua, Kevin Auyoung, "Musically Interactive Rendered Animation (MIRA)" [Video: 70MB]
• 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 - 2002                          Motion Capture project                                      Entertainment Technology Center, CMU

• 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

2001                                      Earth Theater project                                         Entertainment Technology Center, 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 Center, 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

Last modified: Apr 11, 2004