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SONY Advertises Awards focused on Innovation and Focused Research

Aug 21, 2020, 16:27 PM by Melodi Moore
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As part of one of the world's most innovative and recognizable brands. Sony is committed to support university research and innovation in the U.S., Canada, and select European countries, while also fostering partnerships with university faculty and researchers.The Sony Research Award Program provides funding for cutting-edge academic research and helps build a collaborative relationship between faculty and Sony researchers. 

FACULTY INNOVATION AWARD

The Sony Faculty Innovation Award provides up to $100K USD* in funds to conduct pioneering research in the areas listed below.

Biomedical and Life Science

  • Integrative Computational Bioimaging Analysis
  • Mixed Reality Visualization for Biomedical Imaging
  • Remote and Telemedicine
  • Aging Associated Disease Management
  • New Surgical Imaging Modalities
  • Digital Health Passport
  • Digital Measurements of Patient Reported Outcomes
  • Breakthrough Remote-monitoring Wearable/Portable Systems
  • Interaction/Sensing Technologies for Digital Therapeutics
  • Policy Making for Digital Therapeutics Guidelines
  • Multi-color Biomolecular Pathology/Cellular Imaging
  • Cell Therapy and Related Manufacturing Technologies

Deadline:  September 15, 2020

FOCUSED RESEARCH AWARD

The Sony Focused Research Award provides an opportunity for university faculty and Sony to conduct this type of collaborative, focused research. The award provides up to $150K USD* in funds and may be renewed for subsequent year(s).

Robust Mesh Tracking for Volumetric Capture

3D rigging technology is commonly used to animate a 3D model. However, it requires temporally consistent 3D mesh structures, which means it can be applied only to 3D CG models. On the other hand, volumetric capture generates 3D mesh sequences frame-by-frame and they are temporally inconsistent. Thus, it is hard to re-animate them afterwards. Sony seeks innovative mesh tracking approaches that can generate temporally consistent 3D mesh sequences from inconsistent ones. Possible applications include, not only re-animation, but any one of various purposes such as 3D compression, pose/parts recognition, etc.

Scope of Proposal

  • Various approaches to achieve robust mesh tracking.
  • The mesh tracking should be able to;
    • Generate temporally consistent 3D mesh sequences from inconsistent ones, and
    • Achieve robust tracking results against topology changes, geometry noise and dynamic scenes.
  • It is expected that the mesh tracking does not use any prior models of humans and objects.

Intelligent Sensing of Patient-Reported Outcomes

The importance of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in clinical practice has been increasingly recognized. Despite the growing adoption of electronic measurement of PROs (ePROs), however, they are still collected from troublesome questionnaires, which risk decreasing patient engagement. Sony seeks breakthrough ideas on digital measurements of patient symptoms and behavior, which could not only replace conventional questionnaires but also add novel clinical value.

Scope of Proposal

  • Development and clinical validation of sensing/remote monitoring technologies for the following PROs (diseases) including but not limited to:
    • Speech patterns, facial expressions, and social interactions (e.g., mental disorders); and
    • Hand/arm function and walking behavior (e.g., dementia, multiple sclerosis).

Deadline:  September 15, 2020