LEARNING TO SEE

The school aims to provide a stimulating opportunity for young researchers and Ph.D. students. The participants will benefit from direct interaction and discussions with world leaders in Computer Vision. Participants will also have the possibility to present the results of their research, and to interact with their scientific peers, in a friendly and constructive environment.

LIST OF SPEAKERS
• Yoshua Bengio, Université de Montréal, Canada
• Thomas Brox, University of Freiburg, Germany
• Daniel Buchmuller, Amazon, Cambridge, UK
• Daniel Cremers, Technische Universität München, Germany
• Fei-Fei Li, Stanford University, USA
• Marc Pollefeys, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Cees Snoek, University of Amsterdam & Qualcomm Research, The Netherlands
• Stefano Soatto, UCLA, USA
• Doris Tsao, California Institute of Technology, USA
• Andrea Vedaldi, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
• Rene Vidal, The Johns Hopkins University, USA
• Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Stéphane Mallat, École Normale Supérieure, France
• Matthew Zeiler, Clarifai, USA

Courses details are available here.

SPECIAL SESSION - Industry meets Student

This year, in addition to the academic programme, we are organizing a special session to allow students to meet and learn about the opportunities and activities at the world leading research laboratories and companies which are exploiting computer vision.

Industrial Panel
• Michael Donoser, Amazon, Berlin, Germany
• Fabio Galasso, OSRAM Corporate Technology, Germany
• Gerard Medioni, Amazon, USA
• Jason Meltzer, iRobot, USA
• David Moloney, Movidius, USA
• Naila Murray,Xerox Research Centre Europe, France
• Patrick Sauer, Toyota Research Europe, Belgium
• Cees Snoek, Qualcomm Research, The Netherlands
• Bjorn Stenger, Toshiba Research Europe, United Kingdom
• Daniel Wagner, Qualcomm Research, Austria
• Matthew Zeiler, Clarifai, USA

SCHOOL DIRECTORS
• Roberto Cipolla, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Sebastiano Battiato, University of Catania, Italy
• Giovanni Maria Farinella, University of Catania, Italy

SCHOOL APPLICATION
The school will be open to about 100 qualified, motivated and pre-selected candidates.

SCHOLARSHIP
A scholarship of 500€ (supported by Toshiba Research Europe) will be awarded to the best PhD student attending the school. The decision will be made by the school committee at the time of the school, taking into account candidates' cv, poster and oral presentation. All PhD students attending the school will be considered for the grant.

BEST PRESENTATION PRIZE
A selected subset from the submitted posters will be selected by the school committee for short oral presentation. Two best presentation prizes of 500€ (supported by Qualcomm and Amazon) will be given to the best presentations selected by the school committee.

READING GROUP (WITH PRIZE!)
During a typical PhD and subsequent research year, students will read probably more than 100 papers. Reading research papers is a skill that can be acquired and that is very different from reading a novel. This session is to introduce students to that skill.

Good ideas have deep roots. Understanding such roots is key to being able to generate new ideas moving forward. The main goal of the Reading Group is to practice ways in which exploration of these roots can be performed. The homework prior to the commencement of the school consists in studying (not just reading) one or more of the references provided by the school commitee, and tracing the ideas as far back as you can.

Detailed instructions will be sent to students after acceptance notification.

ESSAY COMPETITION - The Social Impact of Computer Vision
Deadline for submission is: 15 June 2015

This essay competition reflects the importance of considering the “real world” social impact of technology alongside the fundamental goals of basic R&D. Computer Vision is an area of scientific and technological development that will continue to have a profound impact on society. It will redefine the way in which information technology intersects and interfaces with medicine and other disciplines, it will play a key role in the care of an ageing population and it is already a fundamental aspect of modern security technology.

Participants in the competition may write a piece of original work on the topic reported below. There are no style guidelines, or “correct answers”. You may reference any sources you wish (from any field of thought / endeavor). You may contextualize the discussion to your specific area of investigation and research interest. It is however requested that the discussion be scientific and grounded on current technological and research achievements, e.g. start-ups, patents, publications. There is a strict word limit of 1,500 words, excluding citations and footnotes. Through an entirely subjective, qualitative and irreproducible selection process, two successful essayists will have his €500 attendance fees at the ICVSS 2015 reimbursed. The essay competition prize is sponsored by Microsoft and GIRPR.

Submissions should be sent in PDF or Word format to icvss@dmi.unict.it. Your name, email address and university/ organization should be written at the top of your essay. Deadline for submission is 15 June 2015. The winner of the competition will be announced on 17 July 2015. The essays will be shared with fellow summer school attendees.

Essay Topic:
Additional sensors and multi-modal computing for assistive computer vision.

SCHOOL DEADLINES
Student Application: 31 March 2015
Notification Acceptance: 15 April 2015
Early Registration: 30 April 2015
Late Registration (with extra payment of 150 €): After 30 April 2015
Accommodation Reservation at Hotel Village Baia Samuele: 10 May 2015
Poster Submission: 15 May 2015
Local Arrangements Information: 15 June 2015
Essay Competition: 15 June 2015
Submission for Reading Group Competition: 13 July 2015 (first day of the school)
Notification of Decision for Oral Presentation: 17 July 2015 (same day of the presentation)

LOCATION OF ICVSS 2015
ICVSS 2015 will be hosted by Hotel Village Baia Samuele in Punta Sampieri - Scicli (Ragusa), Sicily from 12-18 July 2015. Sicily is one of the most beautiful islands of the Mediterranean. The island is very rich in archeological sites from various Ancient Civilizations. The sea, weather, food and the wine are excellent.
In particular Punta Sampieri - Scicli (RG) is located in the south east of Sicily in a late Baroque area called Val di Noto. The Val di Noto area is included in the Unesco World Heritage List and includes eight nearby towns: Caltagirone, Militello Val di Catania, Catania, Modica, Noto, Palazzolo, Ragusa and Scicli.
The location of the school rises in the middle of an ample bay delimited on the west from Sampieri and on the east from a cliff, on which is founded an ancient furnace, rare example of industrial archaeology. The Hotel Village “Baia Samuele” stretches in a gentle slant to the beach: 120 thousand square meters delimited from rows of secular cypresses. An ultramodern village with an original architecture, pleasant design and all comforts you can imagine. The frame of plants and flowers, typical of this angle of Sicily, in front of the island of Malta, completes this gilded dream of the Mediterranean.

ACCOMMODATION RESERVATION AT HOTEL VILLAGE BAIA SAMUELE
ICVSS participants will be hosted at Hotel Village Baia Samuele (school location) at very special rates. ICVSS participants must make reservations for accommodation no later than 10 May 2015, using the accommodation reservation form (Accommodation Reservation Module) to be sent by email directly to Baia Samuele reception (icvss@igrandiviaggi.it). After 10 May 2015 there is no guarantee for reservations in Hotel Village Baia Samuele.

The accommodation prices for ICVSS participants are the following:

SCHOOL BUS SERVICE
The following bus service will be provided by the school (without charge - supported by IAPR):

SHUTTLE SERVICE
A shuttle service is available provided by Eraclea Travels Staff:

• Taxi max 4 passengers - about 176 Euro
• Mini Bus max 8 passengers - about 209 Euro

Reservation can be done directly on site during the school or by email to: info@eracletravels.it

PREVIOUS EDITION
Information on previous ICVSS editions can be found here.