Images are made up of pixels, which in turn uses numbers to represent different colours. We come up with formulas to teach the computer how to recognise objects, based on these pixel values.
He explained, “Images are made up of pixels, which in turn uses numbers to represent different colours. We come up with formulas to teach the computer how to recognise objects, based on these pixel values.” This would allow the computer to independently run its search results and come up with a list of hits, almost like how Google has transformed the face of Internet searches.
Of course, the results will ultimately have to be verified by an actual officer.
“Instead of having one person to each computer, you can have one person controlling several computers,” said Zhichao, on how the technology is boosting efficiency.
Zhichao–whose favourite subject in school was maths–has always managed to parlay his love for mathematics into useful real-world applications.
“I have always had passion for numbers and making sense of data,” he said.
He had kick started his professional career as a statistician, fresh out of National University of Singapore where he studied maths.
In 2011, he joined the healthcare industry as a medical statistician where he collated and analysed clinical data related to research studies.
In 2012, he decided to join the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) hoping that his data crunching skills could be used in formulating or measuring the effectiveness of security policies.
Today, he still uses his skills in mathematics and numerical programming; but instead of dealing with Excel sheets and numbers, he deals with huge amounts of pixel or visual data.
He currently spends about half his time running projects and the other half in pushing the frontiers of video analytics via research and development.
One of the areas which gets him excited is how deep learning techniques can be used to harness useful information from the large amounts of data that we have.
His team is considered the MHA “experts” in this area and they are on hand to give advice to the other Home Team departments in the area of video analytics.
He mused, “What makes me proud of what I do today is that the technology we deal with is used in MHA’s day-to-day operations and can benefit the public.”
For the number cruncher, his passion is his profession and his pride is the pleasure of uplifting the public.