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Michael J. Black

Michael J. Black

Professor of Computer Science

Contact Information

Contact Page
Personal home page: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~black/

Research Areas

Artificial Intelligence
Computational Neuroscience
Computer Vision
Machine Learning

Research Themes

Applications to Medicine
Statistical Approaches
Brain Science

Research Topics or Projects

Anisotropic Diffusion
Bayesian Inference
Belief Propagation
Brain Machine Interfaces
Computational Neuroscience
Computer Vision
Facial Expression Recognition
Graphical Models
Human Motion Estimation
Human Motion Understanding
Human Pose Detection
Image Denoising
Image Segmentation
Image Statistics
Layered Representation of the Visual World
Machine Learning
Markerless Motion Capture
Markov Random Fields
Mixture Models
Motion Discontinuities
Neural Coding
Neural Prostheses
Optical Flow
Particle Filtering
Robotics
Robust Statistics
Science Commentary
Shape from Texture
Specular Motion
Spike Sorting
Structure from Motion
Subspace Learning
Tracking
Video Databases
Visual Psychophysics

Courses Taught

CSCI1430   Introduction to Computer Vision
CSCI2950-O   Topics in Brain-Computer Interfaces
CSCI2950-Q   Topics in Computer Vision

Research Interests

My research lies at the intersection of computer science and the physical world in which machines must interact with, and adapt to, a complex, dynamic, and partially observable environment. My work focuses on the development of mathematical and computational methods that enable computers to make reliable inferences in the face of uncertain and ambiguous measurements that change over time. I explore these general issues in the context of two seemingly different but, in fact, related problems: the estimation and interpretation of visual motion in image sequences and the decoding of neural signals from the brain.

My computer vision research focuses on:
* the statistics of natural images and image motion;
* articulated human motion estimation and full body tracking;
* the representation and detection of motion discontinuities;
* the estimation of optical flow and the recognition of motion events;
* high-dimensional robust learning and inference.

My research on neural engineering, computational neuroscience, and brain-machine interfaces focuses on:
* statistical models of neural coding;
* probabilistic methods for neural decoding;
* developing neural prostheses using implanted microelectrode arrays;
* bionic systems that directly couple brains and robots.

Selected Publications

Roth, S., and Black, M. Fields of Experts: A framework for learning image priors. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (Jun 2005), pp. 860-867. [ pdf ]

Wu, W., Gao, Y., E., B., Donoghue, J., and Black, M. Bayesian population coding of motor cortical activity using a Kalman Filter. Neural Computation 18 (2005), 80-118. [ pdf ]

Sigal, L., Bhatia, S., Roth, S., Black, M., and Isard, M. Tracking loose-limbed people. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (Jun 2004), pp. 421-428. [ pdf ]

Black, M., and Fleet, D. Probabilistic detection and tracking of motion boundaries. International Journal of Computer Vision 38, 3 (Jul 2000), 231-245. [ pdf ]

Sidenbladh, H., Black, M., and Fleet, D. Stochastic tracking of 3D human figures using 2D image motion. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Vision (Jun 2000), pp. 702-718. [ pdf ]

Black, M., Sapiro, G., Marimont, D., and Heeger, D. Robust anisotropic diffusion. IEEE Transactions of Image Processing, Special issue on Partial Differential Equations and Geometry Driven Diffusion in Image Processing and Analysis 7, 3 (Mar 1998), 421-432. [ pdf ]

Black, M., and Anandn, P. The robust estimation of multiple motions: Parametric and piecewise-smooth flow fields. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, CVIU 63, 1 (Jan 1996), 75-104. [ pdf ]

Black, M., and Rangarajan, A. On the unification of line processes, outlier rejection, and robust statistics with applications in early vision. International Journal of Computer Vision 19, 1 (Jul 1996), 57-92. [ pdf ]


All publications by Michael J. Black
Page Owner: Michael J. Black Last Modified: Mon Aug 20 14:30:39 2007