Workshop and Challenge on Learned Image Compression

Anne Aaron is Director of Video Algorithms at Netflix and leads the team responsible for video analysis, processing and encoding in the Netflix cloud-based media pipeline. The team is tasked with generating the best quality video streams for millions of Netflix members worldwide. The team is also actively involved in defining next-generation video through academic research collaboration and standardization work. Prior to Netflix, Anne had technical lead roles at Cisco, working on the software deployed with millions of Flip Video cameras, Dyyno, an early stage startup which developed a real-time peer-to-peer video distribution system, and Modulus Video, a broadcast video encoder company. During her Ph.D. studies at Stanford University, she was a member of the Image, Video and Multimedia Systems Laboratory, led by Prof. Bernd Girod. Her research was one of the pioneering work in the sub-field of Distributed Video Coding. Anne is originally from Manila, Philippines. She holds B.S. degrees in Physics and Computer Engineering from Ateneo de Manila University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Anne was recognized by Forbes as one of America’s Top 50 Women In Tech in 2018. Anne recently binged on Ozark, Bodyguard and Bojack Horseman. Read More

Aaron van den Oord works as a research scientist at DeepMind, London. His research focuses on generative models and representation learning. Aaron completed his PhD at the University of Ghent in Belgium where he worked on generative models, image compression and music recommendation. After he joined DeepMind in 20 15 he made important contributions to the field of generative modeling with autoregressive networks, including PixelRNN, PixelCNN and WaveNet. He also developed new techniques for speeding up generative models for text-to-speech synthesis, which are now used in Google products such as the Google Assistant. In Aaron's most recent work he focused on representation learning with VQ-VAE and Contrastive Predictive Coding.Read More

Luca Versari is a software engineer at Google AI, and works as a core member of the JPEG XL development team. He is responsible for the algorithms and technical architecture of the image quality related aspects of JPEG XL, including integral transforms, color spaces, intra/inter-frame copying, progressive decoding , animation, context modeling, tiling, entropy coding, codec optimization, and integration of psychovisual modeling. Before his Google employment Luca studied algorithms for pattern matching, graphs, hashing and data compression in the University of Pisa, Italy.Read More