On Saturday, Dec. 6, the university graduated its first computer science and engineering doctoral student. The following Monday, Zehang Sun, who hails from Beijing, China, began filling the post of vice president of engineering for eTreppid Technologies, LLC, a Reno firm whose business is video and audio compression.
During his studies at Nevada, Sun, 31, built a real-time vehicle detection system for Ford Motor Company, which is currently running in Ford's concept cars and has been exhibited in several American auto shows.
"This project might save people's lives," Sun says. "It functions like a backseat driver," he explains. When a vehicle equipped with Sun's system gets too close to another on-road vehicle, the system alerts the driver. This project served as the topic for Sun's dissertation.
Sun came to the university in 2000 and began working on this project in the summer of 2001 as a member of Associate Professor of Computer Science George Bebis' Computer Vision research team. Under Bebis' direction, Sun has published two journal papers, 11 conference papers, and has 3 journal papers pending.
"Looking back on the four years of study at Nevada, I had lots of ups and downs in my research," Sun says. "Several times I went to a dead end. At those times, I thought I would never get a Ph.D. degree. It was Dr. Bebis who guided me and the computer science department that supported and encouraged me to continue this journey." Sun was elated following his successful oral defense Dec. 3. He received other job offers, including an offer from a university to take a postdoctoral research position, but chose eTreppid because it offered him the most opportunities, as well as because it allowed him to stay in Reno. "I believe I will have a better future with eTreppid," he says. He notes that his home city is large and congested in comparison to Reno. "Reno is perfect for me."
Sun lives with his wife, Xiaojing Yuan, who works for IGT.