Fascinated by image analysis technologies, Frédéric Jurie, a lecturer-researcher at Caen University, dreams of offering computers their own eyesight.

“How do you explain to a blind person what it’s like to see?” Frédéric Jurie would have loved to become a painter. But instead he became a professor at the GREYC (Caen Research Group in Computer Science, Imaging, Control and Instrumentation). Both professions start with questions. “The cerebral mechanisms that make sense of an image have always fascinated and baffled me.” Since his doctoral thesis in computer vision, he is endeavouring to offer machines the means of interpreting images.
“Today, we can teach a computer to identify a specific object on a photograph, provided that we have already presented it with several thousand different images of the same object,” he explains.

Computers that can see

Frédéric Jurie would like to create an application capable of recognising any given object, within a standard image, whilst reducing this learning process as much as possible. He has conducted over 35 industrial and collective projects on the subject over the last 15 years. “I prefer contributing to advancing the discipline through projects funded by Europe, the ANR or private companies, and that pose specific issues.”
The young researcher has a pragmatic approach and is keen to encourage the applied dimension of research. Today, with extensive experience and in charge of an influential network, he has decided to leave his position at the INRIA(1) in Grenoble to devote more time to teaching.
“I believe that transmitting knowledge is an important mission.” And he also believes that he has now gained sufficient experience to reunite research and teaching. And in September 2007, he chose Caen University, where he joined the GREYC (1). “Here in Caen, I met people who were also keen to develop projects. And that appealed to me.” An important arrival for the GREYC, whose “imaging” team had hitherto concentrated on image processing rather than interpretation.

Economic development for the region

Different projects have emerged since, associating businesses of varying sizes, from SMEs to multinationals. “Fields of application centred on multimedia, security and safety offer promising economic potential”, he highlights.
Just one drawback: ethical issues. “for example, we are working with EADS (3), on a system capable of extracting from a video, the faces that correspond to a set of predefined criteria.” Aware of the risks of such technology, Frédéric sought help and advice from legal experts from the University of Lille specialising in ethics, in order to study the ethical and legal issues involved. “We absolutely need to consider the finality and the outcome of our research,” he adds. As for economic spin-off, it could well benefit the entire region. “The notion of territory is of no major importance in our research work, however, I am keen to work with locally-based companies and, as such, to contribute to the region’s economic development.” And his wishes could well come true according to a study on digital documents conducted in April 2008 by the CESR(4). The council has confirmed that there is promising potential and that research-enterprise collaboration is on the increase.

At the age of 42, Frédéric Jurie, a young yet experienced professor at Caen University, has successively been:
• Chairman of the French Association for Form Recognition and Interpretation  (www.afrif.asso.fr).
• Assistant director of the SIMEM (Science of Structures, Information, Matter and Materials) doctoral school.
• Assistant Director of Caen University’s Department of Computer Science.
• Assistant scientific director of the CNRS research group “Information, Signal, Images and VISion”.

(1) INRIA: National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control.
(2) GREYC: Caen Research Group in Computer Science, Imaging, Control and Instrumentation (UMR UCBN, ENSICAEN, CNRS)
(3) EADS: European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company
(4) CESR: Lower Normandy Regional Economic and Social Council.

Frederic Jurie
GREYC
Tel: 02 31 56 74 34

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