Min Wu's Home Page (吴旻)

I received a B.S.E. degree in electrical engineering -- automation and a B.A. degree in economics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China in 1996 (both with the highest honors), and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 2001.
I joined the faculty of the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department (ECE) and the Institute of Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I am currently a Professor and a University Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. I am currently serving as Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs of the A. James Clark School of Engineering since Fall 2019. I am also affiliated with the Institute of Systems Research (ISR) at UMD. I lead the Media And Security Team (MAST), with main research interests on information security and forensics, and multimedia signal processing.
I served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2015-2017), and was elected Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Information Forensics and Security (IFS TC, 2012-2013) and Vice President - Finance of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (2010-2012). I have been elected by members to serve as President-Elect (2022-2023) and President (2024-2025) of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. It is a tremendous honor and responsibility to become the first woman of color to serve in the top leadership over nearly 75 years' history of this professional society with nineteen thousand members worldwide.)
Visit this mini gallery that captures some of the fond memories of my professional journey.

Selected Projects on Physiologic Forensics
Can we track your heart rate without wearing or touching any sensors, even while you run on a treadmill? How about tracking your breathing? Can we track your ECG continuously without annoying stickers or keep holding onto sensors? Check out our research on physiological forensics exploring micro signals from video and other sensing modalities and visit this site to learn more:

^NEW M. Chen, Q. Zhu, Q. Wang, and M. Wu: "Modulation Model of the Photoplethysmography Signal for Vital Sign Extraction," IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI), published online Aug. 2020 for early access, PMID 32750983, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 969-977, April 2021.

Q. Zhu, C-W. Wong, C-H. Fu, and M. Wu, “Fitness Heart Rate Measurement Using Face Videos,” Proc. of IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing (ICIP 2017), Beijing, China, Sept. 2017. [Video+Presentation]

^{Check this out} Q. Zhu, M. Chen, C.-W. Wong, and M. Wu: “Adaptive Multi-Trace Carving for Robust Frequency Tracking in Forensic Applications,” IEEE Trans. on Info. Forensics and Security, vol. 15, pp. 1174 – 1189, 2020.

X. Tian, Q. Zhu, Y. Li, and M. Wu: “Cross-Domain Joint Dictionary Learning for ECG Reconstruction from PPG,” Proc. of IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Barcelona, Spain, May 2020.

^NEW F. Zhang, C. Wu, B. Wang, M. Wu, D. Bugos, H. Zhang, K.J. Liu: “SMARS: Sleep Monitoring via Ambient Radio Signal,” IEEE Trans. on Mobile Computing, published online Sept. 2019 for early access, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 217-231, Jan. 2021.

Selected Projects on Machine Learning

The fast advancement of machine learning technologies prompts an increasing need of investigating issues of security and fairness. Check out our work in these areas as well as various applications of deep learning:

^{Check this out} M. Chen and M. Wu: “Towards Threshold Invariant Fair Classification,” International Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI 2020), Aug. 2020. [27.6% acceptance rate]

M. Chen and M. Wu: “Protect Your Deep Neural Networks from Piracy,” IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS), Hong Kong, China, Dec. 2018.

^NEW F. Wang, K. Zheng, L. Lu, J. Xiao, M. Wu, and S. Miao: “Automatic Vertebra Localization and Identification in CT by Spine Rectification and Anatomically-constrained Optimization,” Proc. of IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR’21). [27% acceptance rate]

Selected Projects on Media Forensics

When was a video captured? Where? Was the sound track captured together with the visual? Or added on later? Check out our work exploring environmental fingerprint from power grid and many other types of micro signals:

M. Wu: "Visualizing Micro Signals," Plenary talk at the IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing (ICIP 2018), Athens, Greece, Oct. 2018. Video and slides are coming soon to the IEEE Signal Processing Resource Center.

M. Stamm, M. Wu, and K.J.R. Liu, "Information Forensics: An Overview of the First Decade," invited paper for the inaugural issue, IEEE Access, vol. 1, 2013.

R. Garg, A.L. Varna and M. Wu, " 'Seeing' ENF: Natural Time Stamp for Digital Video via Optical Sensing and Signal Processing," ACM Multimedia 2011, Best Student Paper Award. [17% acceptance]. An updated and expanded version will appear in IEEE Trans. on Info. Forensics & Security in 2013 (DOI: 10.1109/TIFS.2013.2272217 ).

W-H. Chuang, R. Garg, and M. Wu, "How Secure are Power Network Signature Based Time Stamps?” ACM CCS, Oct. 2012. [19% acceptance]

C-W. Wong and M. Wu: “Counterfeit Detection Based on Unclonable Feature of Paper Using Mobile Camera,” IEEE Trans. on Info. Forensics and Security, vol. 12, no. 8, pp. 1885-1899, August 2017.

Activities
I chaired the IEEE Technical Committee on Information Forensics and Security (IFS-TC, 2012-2013), and was elected IEEE Fellow Class of 2011, AAAS Fellow in 2017 [UMD news], and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) in 2019 [UMD news].
I completed my 3-year term as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2015-2017), and earlier I served as Founding Chief Editor of the IEEE SigPort online repository and Area Editor of the SPM for creating and editing the monthly "Inside Signal Processing eNewsletter (2007-2010)."
For three years from 2015 to 2017, I wrote a bimonthly editorial as an opening article in each issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. This collection of editorials (compiled here in a PDF file) was part of my many Editor-in-Chief responsibilities at the time. I valued the opportunity to reflect on a number of topics, from innovation, to education and outreach, to community building, to gender diversity, to the synergy with art and science, and many more.
A special issue on "Digital Forensics" that I edited with colleagues in the IFS-TC appeared in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (SPM) in March 2009. An article on "Component Forensics" framework I co-authored was also translated to Chinese as an outreach effort of SPM. [IEEE Xplore, PDF; 中文版]
The paths of engineering and economics/management -- the two college majors I pursued -- crossed again 10 years since graduation, when I served as Finance Chair for IEEE's flagship conference on signal processing -- ICASSP'07. Later I served as Vice President - Finance of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (2010-2012).

I have been the Principal Investigator or Co-PI for several basic and advanced research projects funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense on information security and forensics. Learn more from my research page.
Several grants have explored micro signals for digital forensics, as mentioned under the "Selected Projects" above. Before that, a 3-year NSF effort of "Fashion," or Forensic Hash for Assured Cyber-based Sensing and Communications, aims at exploring the synergy between multimedia hashing and non-intrusive forensics [UMD news]. Earlier, I had a 3-year NSF effort focuses on addressing physical-layer challenges through cross-layer approaches to wireless secure communications, dubbed as the CLAWS effort [UMD news], and my research on "Signal Processing Approaches for Multimedia Security and Information Protection" was sponsored by NSF through a 5-year CAREER award program ('02-'07) [E@M Magazine news]). Learn more about our earlier reserach on Embedded Digital Fingerprints funded by the basic research program by the U.S. Depeartment of Defense.

Awards and Honors NAI Fellow, U.S. National Academy of Inventors, elected Dec. 2019.
AAAS Fellow, elected Nov. 2017, for contributions to multimedia security and forensics.
IEEE Fellow, Class 2011, for contributions to multimedia security and forensics.

2015: Meritorious Service Award for “for exemplary service to and leadership in the Signal Processing Society,” IEEE Signal Processing Society.
2013: University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, a university honor for excellence in research and teaching.

2012: Innovator of the Year Award (The Daily Record) 2012 & 2014: Invention of the Year Award (Univ. Maryland, twice).
2007: Computer World "40 under 40" Young IT Innovator Award.
2005: U.S. DoD ONR Young Investigator Award (YIP), 2005.
2004: MIT Technology Review Magazine TR100 award, as one of the 100 top young innovators under age of 35 whose contribution to emerging technologies will profoundly influence our world. [UMD news; photo article from the Chinese edition of TR magazine]
2002: U.S. NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER).

2004-2005: IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award and EURASIP Best Paper Award. For two journal publications in multimedia and forensics.
Best Student Paper Awards, ICASSP 2005 and ACM Multimedia 2011, with student coauthors.

2019: IEEE Harriett B. Rigas Award, for “excellence and outstanding leadership in signal processing, education, and mentoring.”
2009: IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award.
2009-2010: Robert Kent Junior Faculty Teaching Award, College of Engineering, Univ. Maryland, College Park.
2003: George Corcoran Faculty Education Award in electrical engineering.

My book, "Multimedia Data Hiding", (co-authored with Prof. Bede Liu, Springer-Verlag, 2002), addresses both fundamental and practical issues, and tackles both design and attack problems. [Available at Amazon.com and Barnes&Nobles]
I also coauthored a book on "Multimedia Fingerprinting Forensics for Traitor Tracing " in Fall 2005 (EURASIP Book Series, by Hindawi Publishing).

Teaching ENEE101 Introduction to Machine Learning (co-teaching since Fall'15, leading the module on image processing and media security)
ENEE324 Engineering Probability (Spring'06; undergraduate core)
ENEE408G Capstone Design Course on Multimedia Signal Processing (Fall'02, Spring'03, Spring'05, Fall'06, Spring'11-'12)
ENEE425 Digital Signal Processing (Fall'14)
ENEE439M/436 Foundations of Machine Learning (Fall'19)
ENEE439D (Capstone) Design Project of Machine Learning (Spring'20, Spring '21)
ENEE624/630 Advanced Signal Processing (Fall '03-'04, '09-'12, '18; graduate core)
ENEE631 Digital Image and Video Processing (Fall'01, Spring'04, '07, '09, '10, '13, '15, '17-'19; graduate level)
ENEE739 Advanced Topics on Signal Processing: Multimedia Security, Forensics, and Communications (Spring'02, Fall '05)

Thanks for visiting!


Selected Projects on Physiologic Forensics		Can we track your heart rate without wearing or touching any sensors, even while you run on a treadmill? How about tracking your breathing? Can we track your ECG continuously without annoying stickers or keep holding onto sensors? Check out our research on physiological forensics exploring micro signals from video and other sensing modalities and visit this site to learn more: ^NEW M. Chen, Q. Zhu, Q. Wang, and M. Wu: "Modulation Model of the Photoplethysmography Signal for Vital Sign Extraction," IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI), published online Aug. 2020 for early access, PMID 32750983, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 969-977, April 2021. Q. Zhu, C-W. Wong, C-H. Fu, and M. Wu, “Fitness Heart Rate Measurement Using Face Videos,” Proc. of IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing (ICIP 2017), Beijing, China, Sept. 2017. [Video+Presentation] ^{Check this out} Q. Zhu, M. Chen, C.-W. Wong, and M. Wu: “Adaptive Multi-Trace Carving for Robust Frequency Tracking in Forensic Applications,” IEEE Trans. on Info. Forensics and Security, vol. 15, pp. 1174 – 1189, 2020. X. Tian, Q. Zhu, Y. Li, and M. Wu: “Cross-Domain Joint Dictionary Learning for ECG Reconstruction from PPG,” Proc. of IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Barcelona, Spain, May 2020. ^NEW F. Zhang, C. Wu, B. Wang, M. Wu, D. Bugos, H. Zhang, K.J. Liu: “SMARS: Sleep Monitoring via Ambient Radio Signal,” IEEE Trans. on Mobile Computing, published online Sept. 2019 for early access, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 217-231, Jan. 2021.

Selected Projects on Machine Learning		The fast advancement of machine learning technologies prompts an increasing need of investigating issues of security and fairness. Check out our work in these areas as well as various applications of deep learning: ^{Check this out} M. Chen and M. Wu: “Towards Threshold Invariant Fair Classification,” International Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI 2020), Aug. 2020. [27.6% acceptance rate] M. Chen and M. Wu: “Protect Your Deep Neural Networks from Piracy,” IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS), Hong Kong, China, Dec. 2018. ^NEW F. Wang, K. Zheng, L. Lu, J. Xiao, M. Wu, and S. Miao: “Automatic Vertebra Localization and Identification in CT by Spine Rectification and Anatomically-constrained Optimization,” Proc. of IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR’21). [27% acceptance rate]

Selected Projects on Media Forensics		When was a video captured? Where? Was the sound track captured together with the visual? Or added on later? Check out our work exploring environmental fingerprint from power grid and many other types of micro signals: M. Wu: "Visualizing Micro Signals," Plenary talk at the IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing (ICIP 2018), Athens, Greece, Oct. 2018. Video and slides are coming soon to the IEEE Signal Processing Resource Center. M. Stamm, M. Wu, and K.J.R. Liu, "Information Forensics: An Overview of the First Decade," invited paper for the inaugural issue, IEEE Access, vol. 1, 2013. R. Garg, A.L. Varna and M. Wu, " 'Seeing' ENF: Natural Time Stamp for Digital Video via Optical Sensing and Signal Processing," ACM Multimedia 2011, Best Student Paper Award. [17% acceptance]. An updated and expanded version will appear in IEEE Trans. on Info. Forensics & Security in 2013 (DOI: 10.1109/TIFS.2013.2272217 ). W-H. Chuang, R. Garg, and M. Wu, "How Secure are Power Network Signature Based Time Stamps?” ACM CCS, Oct. 2012. [19% acceptance] C-W. Wong and M. Wu: “Counterfeit Detection Based on Unclonable Feature of Paper Using Mobile Camera,” IEEE Trans. on Info. Forensics and Security, vol. 12, no. 8, pp. 1885-1899, August 2017.

Activities		I chaired the IEEE Technical Committee on Information Forensics and Security (IFS-TC, 2012-2013), and was elected IEEE Fellow Class of 2011, AAAS Fellow in 2017 [UMD news], and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) in 2019 [UMD news]. I completed my 3-year term as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2015-2017), and earlier I served as Founding Chief Editor of the IEEE SigPort online repository and Area Editor of the SPM for creating and editing the monthly "Inside Signal Processing eNewsletter (2007-2010)." For three years from 2015 to 2017, I wrote a bimonthly editorial as an opening article in each issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. This collection of editorials (compiled here in a PDF file) was part of my many Editor-in-Chief responsibilities at the time. I valued the opportunity to reflect on a number of topics, from innovation, to education and outreach, to community building, to gender diversity, to the synergy with art and science, and many more. A special issue on "Digital Forensics" that I edited with colleagues in the IFS-TC appeared in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (SPM) in March 2009. An article on "Component Forensics" framework I co-authored was also translated to Chinese as an outreach effort of SPM. [IEEE Xplore, PDF; 中文版] The paths of engineering and economics/management -- the two college majors I pursued -- crossed again 10 years since graduation, when I served as Finance Chair for IEEE's flagship conference on signal processing -- ICASSP'07. Later I served as Vice President - Finance of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (2010-2012).

		I have been the Principal Investigator or Co-PI for several basic and advanced research projects funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense on information security and forensics. Learn more from my research page. Several grants have explored micro signals for digital forensics, as mentioned under the "Selected Projects" above. Before that, a 3-year NSF effort of "Fashion," or Forensic Hash for Assured Cyber-based Sensing and Communications, aims at exploring the synergy between multimedia hashing and non-intrusive forensics [UMD news]. Earlier, I had a 3-year NSF effort focuses on addressing physical-layer challenges through cross-layer approaches to wireless secure communications, dubbed as the CLAWS effort [UMD news], and my research on "Signal Processing Approaches for Multimedia Security and Information Protection" was sponsored by NSF through a 5-year CAREER award program ('02-'07) [E@M Magazine news]). Learn more about our earlier reserach on Embedded Digital Fingerprints funded by the basic research program by the U.S. Depeartment of Defense.

Awards and Honors		NAI Fellow, U.S. National Academy of Inventors, elected Dec. 2019. AAAS Fellow, elected Nov. 2017, for contributions to multimedia security and forensics. IEEE Fellow, Class 2011, for contributions to multimedia security and forensics. 2015: Meritorious Service Award for “for exemplary service to and leadership in the Signal Processing Society,” IEEE Signal Processing Society. 2013: University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, a university honor for excellence in research and teaching. 2012: Innovator of the Year Award (The Daily Record) 2012 & 2014: Invention of the Year Award (Univ. Maryland, twice). 2007: Computer World "40 under 40" Young IT Innovator Award. 2005: U.S. DoD ONR Young Investigator Award (YIP), 2005. 2004: MIT Technology Review Magazine TR100 award, as one of the 100 top young innovators under age of 35 whose contribution to emerging technologies will profoundly influence our world. [UMD news; photo article from the Chinese edition of TR magazine] 2002: U.S. NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER). 2004-2005: IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award and EURASIP Best Paper Award. For two journal publications in multimedia and forensics. Best Student Paper Awards, ICASSP 2005 and ACM Multimedia 2011, with student coauthors. 2019: IEEE Harriett B. Rigas Award, for “excellence and outstanding leadership in signal processing, education, and mentoring.” 2009: IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award. 2009-2010: Robert Kent Junior Faculty Teaching Award, College of Engineering, Univ. Maryland, College Park. 2003: George Corcoran Faculty Education Award in electrical engineering.

		My book, "Multimedia Data Hiding", (co-authored with Prof. Bede Liu, Springer-Verlag, 2002), addresses both fundamental and practical issues, and tackles both design and attack problems. [Available at Amazon.com and Barnes&Nobles] I also coauthored a book on "Multimedia Fingerprinting Forensics for Traitor Tracing " in Fall 2005 (EURASIP Book Series, by Hindawi Publishing).

Teaching		ENEE101 Introduction to Machine Learning (co-teaching since Fall'15, leading the module on image processing and media security) ENEE324 Engineering Probability (Spring'06; undergraduate core) ENEE408G Capstone Design Course on Multimedia Signal Processing (Fall'02, Spring'03, Spring'05, Fall'06, Spring'11-'12) ENEE425 Digital Signal Processing (Fall'14) ENEE439M/436 Foundations of Machine Learning (Fall'19) ENEE439D (Capstone) Design Project of Machine Learning (Spring'20, Spring '21) ENEE624/630 Advanced Signal Processing (Fall '03-'04, '09-'12, '18; graduate core) ENEE631 Digital Image and Video Processing (Fall'01, Spring'04, '07, '09, '10, '13, '15, '17-'19; graduate level) ENEE739 Advanced Topics on Signal Processing: Multimedia Security, Forensics, and Communications (Spring'02, Fall '05)