CSE Professor and AUA Alumna Participate at IEEE ICIP 2022

2 min read

YEREVAN, Armenia — On October 16-19, 2022, the American University of Armenia (AUA) Akian College of Science and Engineering (CSE) Assistant Professor Dr. Varduhi Yeghiazaryan and AUA alumna Yeva Gabrielyan (BSCS ’19; MSCIS ’22) presented their research project on “Parallel Partitioning: Path Reducing and Union–Find Based Watershed for the GPU” at the International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), initiated by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in Bordeaux, France. 

The implementation and presentation of the project at the conference was made possible thanks to AUA’s faculty research award, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s hort-term conference and travel grant, as well as the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s travel grant.

IEEE ICIP 2022, as the world’s largest technical conference, served as a particularly fitting opportunity for networking with conferees from academia and industry. Held in a hybrid format this year, the conference welcomed participants from different parts of the world. Through insightful keynote speeches, industry sessions, exhibits, and tutorials, it brought to light cutting-edge research trends and methodology in image and video processing, as well as computer vision. Dr. Yeghiazaryan remarks, “ICIP was a good networking and learning experience for us. I hope presentations at internationally established conferences like ICIP will motivate our students to commit to research projects and produce competitive results.” 

The first steps into this research project were taken back in 2021, when the primary goal was to tackle the classic task of identifying and labeling shapes in digital images using a novel parallel algorithm. However, during the experimental stage in 2022, Dr. Yeghiazaryan and Gabrielyan focused on drawing up an algorithm for a watershed transform. Thus, the project produced two novel parallel watershed algorithm proposals that achieve unmatched execution times. Currently, the researchers are working on an article draft that will include a more detailed overview of the results obtained from their experiments on watershed and waterfall transforms.

CSE professors and alumni continue to expand their research while making an impact with their impressive findings on an international scale as well. 

Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, affiliated with the University of California, and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission in the United States. AUA provides local and international students with Western-style education through top-quality undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs, promotes research and innovation, encourages civic engagement and community service, and fosters democratic values.