The University of Stellenbosch has introduced a post-graduate programme in new media.
The programme, called the MIH Media Lab, is a joint initiative between Naspers and the University of Stellenbosch. The Naspers/MIH group is sponsoring research into new media at the university, and offering students exposure to the group's Internet-related activities, in order to stimulate research in Web and mobile technologies in SA.
According to Dr Gert-Jan van Rooyen, supervisor in peer-to-peer media distribution in the department, the MIH Media Lab does research on emerging technologies that change the ways humans interact with each other, computers and information. “Our research projects include social network analysis, smart Web applications, augmented reality, computer games, e-commerce and human-computer interaction.”
The research team consists of post-graduate students, mostly at Masters level, with a few Honours and PhD researchers. He says: “Masters and PhD students do fully research-based degrees, but have the option to also take post-graduate courses in topics that could support their research.”
Van Rooyen says the Lab emphasises applied research, with projects that have a good chance of producing prototypes or proof-of-concepts that could eventually be commercialised. “Generous funding and direct collaboration with the industry partner made it possible to grow our research effort in this field - something that would not have been possible without this kind of support,” he says.
Examining the media
The programme consists of four components: Semantic Web technologies, augmented reality, gaming, and media distribution.
Semantic Web technologies, says Van Rooyen, is about developing Web services and resources that are better aware of the nature of their own content. It involves teaching computers to better understand the content of documents written in natural language. It consists of “comparing, clustering and recommending documents and other resources, smarter search technology, social networking analysis and e-commerce applications such as social shopping”.
Augmented reality (AR) deals with mixing elements of the real and the digital world, “for example to superimpose digital information over objects in the physical world, or to add real-world elements to virtual environments such as games,” says Van Rooyen. “We do work on the signal processing, computer vision, rendering and hardware that make AR possible.”
Gaming, he says, delves into massively multiplayer online games, including networking and processing issues. “It also includes live-streaming of network games to 'thin' client, application of other human-computer-interfacing and signal processing research to gaming.”
The final component is media distribution, which is on-demand and delay-tolerant content distribution over peer-to-peer networks. Van Rooyen, who supervises this component, says it comprises of video streaming over heterogeneous networks, such as combined wired, wireless and vehicular networks.
Most of the students that are accepted have an electronic engineering degree, or a Bachelor of Science, Honours in computer science or applied mathematics. “However, because we are a strongly interdisciplinary lab, we also consider applications from students with just a BSc, a BA in socio-informatics, or a BCom,” adds Van Rooyen.
Mostly, he maintains, the department is interested in students with a strong interest in Web and mobile technology, and that have an interesting and unique skill set to bring to the research team.
The department has one Master of Arts in socio-informatics student working on the use of AR technology to help people navigate unfamiliar indoor environments. “We are definitely interested in attracting more students from the humanities, as long as they have a strong interest in technology, and preferably have some software experience,” notes Van Rooyen.
Research with a twist
Since the MIH Media Lab is purely a research environment, there is no formal course content, he says. “Students enrol for a degree in the faculty of their choice, with a research supervisor from that faculty.”
The nature of post-graduate degrees is based on research, and looks to the future of media and the way new media works. The department offers a new band of research, to take this field further.
Some students can elect to take post-graduate courses in their faculty, to support their research. Van Rooyen maintains that the lab provides a research space with all the facilities to assist students in their work.
At the moment, the lab is unique to the University of Stellenbosch. “We do, however, involve external supervisors from other institutions where we feel they may provide a unique or specialist contribution,” says Van Rooyen.
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