Students Report from ACM MMsys 2023

The 14th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (with the associated workshops: NOSSDAV 2023, MMVE 2023, and the first edition of GMSys 2023) took place from 7th – 10th June 2023 in Vancouver, Canada.  The MMSys conference brings together researchers in multimedia systems to showcase and exchange their cutting-edge research findings. Once again, there were technical talks spanning various multimedia domains and inspiring keynote presentations. Participants had also the opportunity to further interact with colleagues while enjoying the sunset with a 360° view of Vancouver on the Lookout tower or during a dinner in the core of the rainforest. Additionally, this year’s event included a special session dedicated to the memory of Dr. Kuan-Ta Chen, to honor his invaluable contributions to the multimedia community and to inspire the future generation of researches.

To encourage junior researchers to participate on-site, SIGMM has sponsored a group of students with Student Travel Grant Awards. For many of them, this was their first time presenting at an international conference, and it was a wonderful experience. In this article, the recipients of the travel grants share their experiences at MMSys 2023.

Mike Vandersanden, PhD student from Hasselt University, Belgium

As a new PhD student starting my professional academic career less than a year before MMSys ’23, I focused on finding my place in the academic community. My advisor and colleagues encouraged me to achieve two goals: get feedback on my research and build a network. I submitted my first paper and it got accepted for the Doctoral Symposium at the conference, which was a great opportunity to work towards achieving my goals. Presenting my paper allowed me to receive helpful feedback, have interesting discussions, and gain new perspectives. It was motivating to see people interested in my work. During the rest of the conference, I connected with many attendees from different parts of the world. The social events were a great way to meet others, and we also had enjoyable evenings downtown. Upon returning home, I was happy to report to my advisor that I accomplished all my goals for the first year. I am grateful for receiving a student travel grant, as it made it easier to travel to another continent. It also gave me the freedom to manage my budget and increases my chances of attending the conference again next year.

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May Lim, PhD student from National University of Singapore, Singapore

I was both excited and nervous for MMSys 2023 as it was not only my first in-person conference but also in a country I had never visited before. The conference turned out to be one of the most unforgettable and pleasant experience I ever had. It was well-organized with very insightful presentations, many opportunities to interact and exchange contacts with fellow researchers, and not forgetting the organizers’ thoughtful efforts to ensure the great comfort and welfare of the participants. Vancouver’s weather and people were very kind as well.

I am thankful for the travel grant and the support from ACM SIGMM was truly heartening. I hope to continue to be part of this community and pay it forward in other ways.

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Tiago Soares da Costa, PhD student from FEUP, Portugal

MMSys 2023 marked my return to in-person conferences and was one of the most well organized conferences I had the pleasure to participate in. After several virtual conferences, being able to actively meet and discuss interesting topics related to multimedia with fellow researchers was a breath of fresh air. The keynote presentation from Klara Nahrstedt was one of my highlights from MMSys 2023, due to its extensive focus on multi-view streaming, one of the main topics from my PhD research. Ihab Amer was another welcome surprise, presenting us with the current trends in AI encoding from one of the leading tech enterprises, AMD. Regarding paper presentations, I have to highlight the following works: 1) “The AD△ER Framework: Tools for Event Video Representations“, for providing us with a new approach to frameless videos; 2) “Remote Expert Assistance System for Mixed-HMD Clients over 5G Infrastructure” for delivering an impressive tech demonstration; 3) “FleXR: A System Enabling Flexibly Distributed Extended Reality“, for presenting us with a distributed stream processing solution which can be effectively applied to XR-based environments. As for the social events from MMSys 2023, the sights and sounds from Grouse Mountain and the impressive view from the Vancouver Lookout Tower were among some of my favourite moments in Vancouver, that I will forever cherish. Overall, MMSys 2023 was an amazing conference and I’m particularly grateful to the SIGMM committee for providing me with the travel grant.

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Yu-Szu Wei from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

It is a great honor for me to receive the student travel grant and I appreciate it so much. ACM MMsys 2023 is my first in-person experience attending an international conference, it certainly is a fantastic experience for me. I met lots of astonishing researchers and volunteers who solve problems with different, creative, and novel approaches. I exchanged my ideas with them and learned a lot from them. The keynote sessions also gave me brand-new mindsets, finding out that there are lots of issues for us to investigate and deal with. The most impressive thing for me is to stand on the stage and present my work to those experts. I’m so proud of myself for delivering my research ideas in front of the public and gaining abundant feedback from the audience.

Thanks to the committee that organized this awesome event, and provided me the travel grant to attend the conference. I’m looking forward to attending ACM MMSys again in the future.