From: Edgington, Duane Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 11:29 AM To: 'Charlie Barans' Cc: George Sedberry Subject: RE: VARS software IIII Dear Dr. Barans, Think nothing of it. I appreciate frank feedback, even if accidental. A couple of months ago I would have been pretty glumly about us having any real progress until this summer when our full time engineer returns from maternity leave, but I have a very talented post-masters student working full time on a 6 moths internship on the project, who worked with us last summer, and he is focusing on the single fixed camera case, so we are actually make some good progress on the technical issues relevant to fishwatch video. I don't think he is up to building a release that we can ship out the door, however. We will have a couple of other students join the project in the summer as well. Dr. Widder has a special relationship with MBARI -- she is an adjunct researcher at MBARI, meaning she can propose and direct internal projects, get MBARI ship time, and get MBARI engineering resources allocate to her projects. The original Eye-in-the-Sea video system, while primarily funded and developed outside of MBARI, enjoyed the status of being deployed in Monterey Bay using MBARI ship time and ROV support. Last review cycle the MBARI management team specifically directed my AVED project to work with Dr. Widder if she was willing, believing that was a good way to get direction that was relevant to the larger community. So far, so good. It is interesting to us how similar the her needs are to what you all need. In any case, her new observatory camera is in design, so you all have special relevance to us, with lot of real data that we can test and develop against. Because of the deployment timelines, I don't think Edie's camera will get deployed and start generating data until well into 2007. I have a story (well, several, actually) about getting funding. I will spare you all the details, but the summary is that we have had great difficulty getting external funding for our work from NSF. The ocean science review panels tell us our system will never work. The machine vision review panels tell us the project has already been proven. My machine vision collaborators have given up on collaborative grant writing, at least for the time being. We presented to ONR last spring, but you know what their funding profiles are like these days, and they did not express great interest. None-the-less, I was successful very early on getting a tiny grant for collaborative travel, which funded just the travel and a tiny amount of computer equipment for a student at Caltech to work with me. In the end, he worked with us for a year, did most of the core of our system, and used the work as a part of his thesis, which he defended in February. That small amount of money from NSF gave us credibility with his advisor at Caltech, and my management at MBARI, that this was real and worth doing. I am hoping to leverage the work with Dr. Widder into a new proposal to MBARI management for next year, which she will need to be a big part of for them to accept it. And I look for the opportunities for external support, be they large or small, to help keep us going, and to help us show credibility to the MBARI management. I do appreciate that fisheries funding is very modest, even by ocean science standards, so I am most interested in calls for proposals that you all see, or maybe collaborations where you all express support for our work, as opposed to direct funding of our entire effort. Every once in a while I miss my days in medical research, and the funding stream from NIH. In those days I did not appreciate how hard it is to get support in other fields. Finally, I forgot to mention that I got to meet your colleague Dr. Gorka Sancho at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Hawaii, and I got to show him some of our most recent results. Do give him my regards. Duane Edgington -----Original Message----- From: Charlie Barans [mailto:baransc@mrd.dnr.state.sc.us] Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 6:13 AM To: Edgington, Duane Cc: George Sedberry Subject: Fw: VARS software IIII Dear Dr. Edgington, I apologize for my rather rough and frank thoughts that were ment to be sent to Dr. Sedberry the PI of the Fisheries Video project. In my early morning stuper, I hit reply rather than forward. My suggestions to George stand, and I sincerely hope that you find further funding for such a future looking and worthwhile project that would indeed assist us greatly. I believe that we might have been able to assist at some minimal funding level, if our budget was still the normal $50 K/yr, but the ONR has cut funding to our provider SEACOOS and we have been asked to fund two years with carry over from one years ($50 K). I am affraid that fisheries has always been small potatoes in oceanography budgets. With this mistake, I am headed to retirement, so I wish you the best of luck and again am sorry for my e-mail that you received. Best Regards, Charlie B. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charlie Barans" To: "Edgington, Duane" Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 8:57 AM Subject: Re: VARS software II > George, this sounds very promising, although Dr. Edgington is also searching > for future funding. Maybe you could send him ten more video clips that have > different levels of complexity to keep up the focus on our needs. I could > check my list or we could talk about it. Although our/your time table can > match his needs, it is a shame that the prime player for your needs will be > out until just before his project ends. Maybe you should attempt a contact > with Dr. Witter for future reference and collaborations. I'll bet that she > gets a product before the project ends. Just a thought. Thanks, Charlie B. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Edgington, Duane" > To: "George Sedberry" > Cc: "Charlie Barans" ; "Edgington, Duane" > > Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 5:00 PM > Subject: RE: VARS software > > > > Dear Dr. Sedberry, > > I am sorry for the delay in answering your email. I have been out of the > office traveling, and then on vacation. > > We would be delighted to provide our software to SCDNR to help you with > assessing if a video clip from the fishwatch observatory system should > be examined by a scientist. The system is not at a state yet where such > a software transfer is practical, but it is one of our strong project > goals for the year to get our system to a state where we can transfer it > to other nonprofit research organizations, with our system running on a > normal desktop computer. > > We are currently working on enhancing our system to adapt it to fixed > camera observatory video. We are working with Dr. Edith Widder and her > group at Ocean Research & Conservation in Florida, and engineers at > Florida Atlantic University, to analyze video they collect from their > Eye-in-the-Sea low light intensified camera, which they are modifying > for fixed deployment on the MARS observatory in Monterey Bay. While > different in detail, their video is very similar to the FishWatch video > in many respects, and their problem of needing a "filter" to decide > which segments to analyze is most similar. > > Our main technical contributor to our MBARI project is out on maternity > leave. She is due back in July. I hope by the end of the summer to have > a release ready that we can provide to you. > > In the meantime, we can process another set of videos for you all, to > help us access what we need to do to the program to make it useful for > your application. A student in my group has been working on our system > over the last couple of months, and we are getting better results than > what we last shared with you all. > > I hope our timetable matches your needs, and that we can continue to > work together. > > This is the last year of funding from MBARI for our project -- our > management has told us we need to secure external funding to continue > our work beyond December 2006. If you see potential opportunities for > funding our effort, or see a collaborative funding opportunity, I would > very much appreciate hearing about it. > > Very best regards, > > Duane Edgington > http://www.mbari.org/staff/duane > http://www.mbari.org/AVED/ > > -----Original Message----- > From: George Sedberry [mailto:SedberryG@dnr.sc.gov] > Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 8:39 AM > To: Edgington, Duane > Cc: Charlie Barans > Subject: VARS software > > Dear Dr. Edgington, > > We hope that you have been doing fine and that your research is > coming along well. Ms. Jessica Stephen from our lab attended the VARS > workshop and returned with great reports of all the wonderful annotation > work that the MBARI staff is doing to organize video files for access, > recovery and analyses. However, she did not have the opportunity to talk > with you about your auto ID and counting software that we might be able > to adapt to our needs here with the thousands of 10 sec. video clips > that we have recorded. Would you be willing to share your cutting edge > software with SCDNR? Your process would be a vast improvement for us > over having to open up each video clip manually to see if it contains > any numbers of individuals or species. > > Thank you for all of your assistance and attempting to work with some of > our clips in the past. We look forward to hearing from you. > > Sincerely yours, > > George > > George R. Sedberry > Marine Resources Research Institute, SCDNR > P.O. Box 12559 > (217 Ft. Johnson Rd.) > Charleston SC 29412 > > Office: 843-953-9814 > Mobile: 843-607-3089 > Fax: 843-953-9820 > > South Atlantic Bight fish mapping: http://www.csc.noaa.gov/seageofish/ >