The IRIS RESEARCH GROUP was founded in December 21, 1988. Image/video processing and machine vision always have been and remain central research activities. Our motivation is to stay ahead of the obvious R&D tendencies, which drives us towards in depth fundamental research. Our mission statement is to impact on the transformation processes of the knowledge society, which keeps us alert to continuously update our strategic R&D agenda and extend/generalize our background knowledge. We are often seeking inspiration in the unexplored engineering bottlenecks at the interface of various application domains. The specific goal of the group is FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH, continued in Applied Research projects up to a stage where the results - when exploited - have an impact on society and/or ICT applications. - MULTIMEDIA R&D is focused on the design of various ICT modules, part of the E2E distributed and interactive system design chain: data representation, compression algorithms, transmission, forensics, visualization, computational models, complexity and power management. - In MACHINE VISION, new concepts are investigated for establishing a unified approach for various applications. The activity complements our E2E skills by providing modules for audiovisual signal analysis, motion estimation and segmentation, 3D reconstruction from motion & stereo, segmentation and classification, object tracking, ontology-based semantic scene analysis, event detection, robot navigation & sensing, 3D animation, positioning and tracking wireless devices. - In the area of TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORK CONTROL, we focus on another competence needed for E2E system design: heuristic mechanisms and Artificial Intelligence. - In MEDICAL IMAGING and e-HEALTH, we have 3 specific foci: (i) robust mathematical solution methods, bridging the gap between inverse problems and numerical analysis, (ii) image processing and analysis, (iii) human motion with particular attention for frail and elderly people. TECHNOLOGY & KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER, participation in various application value chains and collaboration with industry, public services, and hospitals. are priorities for us. Starting from the previously described fundamental research experience, the IRIS group regularly renews and extends its R&D activities towards various application domains of Information Technology. Besides medical imaging - the oldest application domain of the group, expertise is present in automotive applications, localization and tracking, mobile and fixed communication, new media, remote sensing, satellite image processing, anti-personnel mine and minefield detection, public safety and surveillance., ... Collaborative contracts are existing with different players in the value chain of these applications. A continuous effort goes towards strengthening the involvement of IRIS in collaborative contracts with industry, public services, and hospitals. We are actively searching for opportunities of industrial valorization. The group operates in the broader context of the department ETRO, ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATICS, where three main research groups are collaborating to cover a wide range of generic technologies in Micro- and Optoelectronics (LAMI), Speech & Audio Processing (DSSP) and Multidimensional signal processing and communication with emphasis on Image Processing & Machine Vision (IRIS), which cannot be dealt with separately when the real world applications of the Information Society are envisaged. The collaboration between the three participating research groups leads to integrated transdisciplinary R&D, e.g. (i) in speech/audio and image/video processing in the context of multimedia research, (ii) in the exploitation of new opto-electronic devices for applications of ambient intelligence, gaming and industrial processes, and (iii) in joint channel-source coding.