Education

Carnegie Mellon University
Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (2009 - 2013)
Research Area: Machine learning and audio/image/multimodal signal processing for context-aware mobile applications, indoor positioning/location recognition, human activity recognition
Overall GPA: 3.85/4.0

National Taiwan University
B.S. in Electrical Engineering (2004 - 2008)
Overall GPA: 90.31/100 (3.94/4.0), Major GPA: 91.55/100 (4.0/4.0)

Work Experience

Google Research

Software Engineer, Mountain View, U.S. (03/2014 - present)

1. Large-scale Machine Learning Team
   

Google

Software Engineering Intern, Mountain View, U.S. (05/2013 - 08/2013)

1. Designed two feature selection algorithms for conversion rate and click-through rate prediction models in Google Ads ranking.
   

1. Implemented scalable algorithms using MapReduce framework.
   

1. Proposed model outperformed the model used in production, leading to a potential revenue gain.
   

Motorola Mobility Research Center

Research Intern, Chicago, U.S. (05/2012 - 08/2012)

1. Designed and implemented a novel human activity recognition system using sensor data from mobile devices.
   

2. Developed an Android app prototype with activity recognition engine.
   

3. Filed a U.S. patent application and published two conference papers.
   

Motorola Mobility

Software Engineering Intern, Sunnyvale, U.S. (05/2011 - 08/2011)

1. Designed a context-based multimedia recommender system using mobile phone sensors.
   

2. Developed/released the recommender app in Android for future production.
   

Qualcomm Research Center

Engineering Research Intern, San Diego, U.S. (05/2010 - 08/2010)

1. Designed and implemented a set of new methods and apparatus for contactless gesture recognition using proximity sensor arrays for mobile devices.
   

2. Filed a U.S. patent application and published two conference papers.
   

Research Experience

CyLab Mobility Research Center | Advisor: Prof. Martin Griss

Semantic Attribute-Based Learning for Human Activity Recognition | 2011 - present

1. Designed and implemented zero-shot learning algorithms for time-series sensor data that can generalize knowledge to recognize unseen new activity without training data.
   

2. Achieved 79% accuracy recognizing previously unseen exercise/daily life activities
   

OmniSense: Mobile Sensing and Inference for Context-Aware Applications | 2009 - 2011

1. Developed a location recognition / indoor positioning system using various ambient features and multi-phone classifier fusion.
   

2. Achieved 92% accuracy using SVM classifier. Reduced single-phone error rate by 2X
   

Multimedia Processing and Communications Lab | Advisor: Prof. Homer H. Chen

Automatic chord recognition for music information retrieval | 2007 - 2008

Proposed a hidden Markov model and N-gram based system for chord feature extraction. The system is of high accuracy, and the proposed features are tested to be more effective than MFCC and MPEG-7 audio features when applied to music emotion classification. (The project is in collaboration with Telecommunication Labs, Chunghwa Telecom Co.)

Multimodal music structure analysis and segmentation | 2008 - 2009

Proposed a multimodal system for music structural segmentation based on audio and textual information. Constrained clustering and natural language processing are used to detect music structures (intro/verse/chorus/bridge/outro) and the boundaries.

Multimodal music emotion recognition | 2007 - 2009

Proposed a multimodal approach to exploits audio/textual features by statistical techniques (e.g. PLSA) and developed an emotion-based music retrieval platform.

Speech Processing Lab | Advisor: Prof. Lin-shan Lee

Histogram-based quantization for robust and distributed speech recognition | 2007 - 2008

Modified the assumption of probability distribution used in histogram-based quantization. Quantized speech features become more robust for recognition under low SNR. The effects of environmental noise and channel noise in transmission are also tested.

Large vocabulary speech recognition system | 2007

Designed and built a large vocabulary Chinese speech recognition system using HTK toolkits.

Selected Course Projects

Fast mode decision algorithm for H.264/AVC intra-prediction | Spring 2008

Proposed (a) a variance-based method and (b) an improved filter-based method for macroblock and prediction mode decision for H.264 high-profile video coding using JM 13.2 reference software. (in course Digital Video Technology)

Automatic cloth segmentation based on Markov random field | Spring 2008

Devised an algorithm to segment cloth region of each person in images given detected face locations. Graph Cut algorithm is adopted to iteratively optimize some pre-defined energy functions. (in course Advanced Topics in Multimedia Analysis and Indexing)

Error detection and correction for data transmission over wireless channel | Spring 2008

Designed and built a system using turbo code and an automatic repeat request (ARQ) scheme. Evaluated BER and transmission time over Rayleigh channel. (in course Communication System Lab)

Interactive Billiards System on FPGA | Spring 2007

Designed a billiards game featuring real cue stick with LED as input for CMOS Camera, SRAM controller, VGA display, and physical simulation on FPGA. (in course Digital Circuit Lab)

Patents

1. 1.An Mei Chen, Heng-Tze Cheng, Ashu Razdan, Elliot Buller, “Methods And Apparatus For Contactless Gesture Recognition,” U.S. Patent Application 13/161955, 2011.
   

2. 2.Heng-Tze Cheng, Paul Davis, Jianguo Li, Di You, “System and Method for Activity Recognition,” U.S. Patent Application filed, 2012.
   

Publications

1. 1.Heng-Tze Cheng, Feng-Tso Sun, Martin Griss, Paul Davis, Jianguo Li, Di You, “NuActiv: Recognizing Unseen New Activity Classes from Sensor Data Using Semantic Attribute-Based Learning,” in Proc. ACM Int’l Conf. Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), 2013. (acceptance rate = 15.7%)
   

2. 2.Heng-Tze Cheng, Martin Griss, Paul Davis, Jianguo Li, Di You, “Towards Zero-Shot Learning for Human Activity Recognition Using Semantic Attribute Sequence Model,” in Proc. ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp), 2013. (acceptance rate = 18%)
   

3. 3.Heng-Tze Cheng, Feng-Tso Sun, Senaka Buthpitiya, Martin Griss, "SensOrchestra: Collaborative Sensing for Symbolic Location Recognition," in Proc. International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications, and Services, 2010. (Best Paper Award)
   

4. 4.Le T. Nguyen, Heng-Tze Cheng, Pang Wu, Senaka Buthpitiya, and Ying Zhang, “PnLUM: System for Prediction of Next Location for Users with Mobility,” in Proc. International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive) Mobile Data Challenge Workshop, 2012.
   

5. 5.Heng-Tze Cheng, An Mei Chen, Ashu Razdan, Elliot Buller, "Contactless Gesture Recognition System Using Proximity Sensors," to appear in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE), 2011.
   

6. 6.Heng-Tze Cheng, Zheng Sun, Pei Zhang, "Imirok: Real-Time Imitative Robotic Arm Control for Home Robot Applications," to appear in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom), 2011.
   

7. 7.Heng-Tze Cheng, An Mei Chen, Ashu Razdan, Elliot Buller, "Contactless Gesture Recognition for Mobile Devices," to appear in Proc. ACM Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces for Automotive Applications in conjunction with International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), 2011.
   

8. 8.Heng-Tze Cheng, Senaka Buthpitiya, Feng-Tso Sun, Martin Griss, “OmniSense: A Collaborative Sensing Framework for User Context Recognition Using Mobile Phones,” in ACM International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile), 2010.
   

9. 9.Feng-Tso Sun, Cynthia Kuo, Heng-Tze Cheng, Senaka Buthpitiya, Patricia Collins, Martin Griss, "Activity-aware Mental Stress Detection Using Physiological Sensors," in Proc. International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications, and Services, 2010.
   

10. 10.Heng-Tze Cheng, Feng-Tso Sun, Senaka Buthpitiya, Ying Zhang, Ara V. Nefian, "Lunar Image Classification for Terrain Detection," to appear in Proc. Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC), 2010.
    

11. 11.Senaka Buthpitiya, Heng-Tze Cheng, Feng-Tso Sun, Martin Griss, Anind K. Dey, “Hermes: a Context-Aware Application Development Framework for the Mobile Environment,” in ACM International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile) 2010.
    

12. 12.Feng-Tso Sun, Heng-Tze Cheng, Senaka Buthpitiya, Patricia Collins, Martin Griss, “PainSense: Pain Assessment Through Reality Sensing,” International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive), 2010.
    

13. 13.Heng-Tze Cheng, Yi-Hsuan Yang, Yu-Ching Lin, and Homer H. Chen, "Multimodal Structure Segmentation and Analysis of Music Using Audio and Textual Information", in Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, 2009. [PDF]
    

14. 14.Heng-Tze Cheng, Yi-Hsuan Yang, Yu-Ching Lin, I-Bin Liao, and Homer H. Chen, "Automatic chord recognition for music classification and retrieval," in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, Hannover, Germany, pp. 1505-1508, 2008. [PDF]
    

15. 15.Yi-Hsuan Yang, Yu-Ching Lin, Heng-Tze Cheng, and Homer H. Chen, "Mr. Emo: Music retrieval in the emotion plane," in Proc. ACM Multimedia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, pp. 1003-1004, 2008. [PDF]
    

16. 16.Yi-Hsuan Yang, Yu-Ching Lin, Heng-Tze Cheng, I-Bin Liao, Yeh-Chin Ho, and Homer H. Chen, "Toward multi-modal music emotion classification," in Proc. Pacific-Rim Conf. Multimedia, pp. 70-79, 2008. [PDF]
    

Honors & Awards

1. Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship 2012 Finalist (2012)
   Awarded to 32 out of 109 Ph.D. research proposals selected from 12 top schools in the U.S.
   

2. Google GRAD CS Forum 2012 (2012)
   Granted to 75 U.S./Canada students with academic excellence and leadership in computer science
   

3. Best Paper Award, International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications, Services (2010)
   

4. Qualcomm Research Center Scholarship (2010)
   

5. Qualcomm Qualstar Outstanding Contribution Award (2010)
   

6. Nokia Research Center Fellowship (2009 - 2010)
   

7. Carnegie Institute of Technology Dean's Fellowship (2009)
   

8. 1st prize, National Engineering Paper Competition (2008)
   Awarded to one outstanding undergraduate research paper in Taiwan annually. Hosted
   by Chinese Institute of Engineers.
   

9. 1st prize, National Taiwan University Engineering Technology Paper Contest (2008)
   The largest undergraduate engineering research contest at NTU.
   

10. 3rd prize, NTU Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Outstanding Reports of Special Project (2008)
    

11. Presidential Award (2008)
    Awarded to top 5% of students in each department of NTU (ranked 3/217).
    

12. Undergraduate Research Participation Program Fellowship (2007-2008)
    Project on music emotion recognition, granted by National Science Council.
    

13. Dean's List student (2007 - 2008)
    An honor for top 10% students in each department of NTU.
    

Professional Skills & Languages

Programming Language

C/C++, Java, MATLAB, Python, Objective C, PHP, UNIX shell script

Software & Platforms

Android SDK, Hadoop MapReduce, OpenCV, OpenMP, CUDA, HTK Toolkit, Quartus, H.264/AVC JM Software

Language

1. Chinese (native)
   

2. English (fluent)
   

3. Japanese (Japanese Language Proficiency Test level 3 passed)
   

4. Cantonese (conversational)
   

5. Spanish (basic)
   

Activities & Leadership

1. Student Conductor | National Taiwan University Chorus | 2006 - 2007
   Music director and conductor of a choir of more than 100 people, with two performances in the largest concert halls in Taiwan.
   - Conductor, in "To Dream The Impossible Dream", National Concert Hall, 2007
   - Conductor and Tenor Soloist, in "Reminiscence", Zhongshan Hall, 2006
   
   

2. Tenor Leader | National Taiwan University Chorus | 2005 - 2006
   - Tenor Soloist, in "Path of The Centuries", Taipei City Stage, 2006
   - 1st prize, 11th National Chorus Competition, Taiwan, 2006
   
   

3. Chief Manager | NTU Electrical Engineering Concert | 2007
   Manager of budgeting, programming, advertisement, and general affairs of an annual concert.
   
   

4. Tenor/Music Arranger | SealyCorn Vocal Group | 2005 - 2007
   - 2nd prize (and also the Best Stage Performance Award and the Best Chinese Song Award), 5th Taiwan International Choral Ensemble Competition, 2005
   - 3nd prize, 7th Taiwan International Choral Ensemble Competition, 2007
   
   

5. Guitarist | Musical "Oh! MamaMia", NTU Art Festival | 2005
   

6. Photographer/Editor | NTUEE Daily, NTU Electrical Engineering Camp | 2007
   

7. Member | Table Tennis Team, NTU Electrical Engineering | 2004 - 2005

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