The kind of intense team contests found in sporting events on campus aren’t usually played out in academic competitions. But the Grand Finals of Star Challenge, an international multimedia search competition worth $100,000 to the winning team, took on a decidedly competitive tone. And Beckman Institute researcher Tom Huang sounds just like a coach when talking about his team’s effort.
The University of Illinois team, headed by Huang and fellow Beckman faculty member Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, was the only entry from the United States to reach the Grand Finals held in Singapore in October and was ahead of the other four finalists going into the last round of competition. Prior to the trip to Singapore, Huang sounded like a coach who was just happy to reach the finals. After the Illinois team took home the Bronze medal, it was clear they had their sights set on first place.
“The one thing I want to emphasize is that we entered this kind of competition mainly to learn, not really to win,” Huang said prior to the finals. “Winning means having some luck, especially this final competition, which really depends on luck.”
Afterwards, the spirit of competition was evident.
“We are happy and I’m really proud of the team but of course we were disappointed,” Huang said.
The sort of team competition found in Star Challenge is somewhat unusual in academia. Huang said he and his students participate in other evaluations but Star Challenge was different because of the teamwork it required and because of its competitive nature – the Grand Finals was a two-hour, on-stage event with music playing over loudspeakers and a crowd of interested onlookers.
“My students work together but not to this extent,” Huang said. “It was a very intense experience.
“There was an audience and an emcee who was very dramatic and trying to make it exciting,” he added with a laugh. “With all the music in the background it was a little distracting.”
Star Challenge was created as part of the opening of Fusionopolis, the new research and development arm of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). There were 56 teams from around the world originally entered in the competition, which over a nearly 10-month process required entrants to create algorithms that could search Singapore television shows for specific audio and video segments.
The Illinois team went by the name UIUC-YX and, in addition to Huang and Hasegawa-Johnson, included students Jui Ting Huang, Dennis Lin, Xi Zhou, Zhen Li, Xiaodan Zhuang, and team leader Yuxiao Hu. Although they were leading after the qualifying rounds, the Illinois team was thrown a curve in the last round: Second Life, the user-generated virtual world, was going to be a part of the Grand Finals. At a planning meeting for the finals held a few days before they left, members of the team were asked how many had used Second Life. Muted laughter was the only response.