MultiX Lab General Information

(Last updated: Jul 23, 2024)

Welcome to the Multimedia Analytics Lab Amsterdam (MultiX)! This website is for the lab documentation. For our official lab website, please visit https://multix.io. This is a live document that will periodically be updated.

Table of Content

Onboarding Checklist

Below is a checklist of the onboarding procedure:

  • Make sure you can login to your @uva.nl email on Microsoft Outlook
  • Make sure you can login to the UvA self-service portal
  • Ask Dennis Koelma to add you to the MultiX group mailing list
  • Ask Dennis Koelma to give you access to the IVI and DAS computing clusters
  • Ask Dennis Koelma and your supervisor to arrange laptop, desktop, and monitor screens
  • Ask Nanne van Noord to add you to our Microsoft Outlook group calendar
  • Ask Nanne van Noord to add you to our Slack channel
  • Ask Yen-Chia Hsu to add you to our team channel on Microsoft Teams
  • Register an account on GitHub
  • Ask Yen-Chia Hsu to add you to our GitHub organization
  • Contact Yen-Chia Hsu to put your photo and information on our lab website
  • Read the rest of this document

Contact

For questions about general lab matters, contact Yen-Chia Hsu, Nanne van Noord, or Marcel Worring.

For questions specifically about ICT, contact Dennis Koelma. Below are some examples:

  • Need access to GPU clusters
  • Need to order a new computer
  • Need access to some specific software

These people’s email can be found by typing their names in the search bar after logging into Microsoft Outlook using the @uva.nl account.

Starting September 2023, the Informatics Institute has general emails as contact points. Below are general principles. For details about who to contact for what kind of logistic matters, check the menu of services.

  • The secretary’s office takes care of general questions and should be the first point of contact when it is unclear whom to contact for an issue. Search “secr-ii-science” in UvA’s Microsoft Outlook App for the email.
  • The staffing office takes care of issues related to hiring people. Search “staffing-ii-science” in UvA’s Microsoft Outlook App for the email.
  • The finance office takes care of money matters. Search “finance-ii-science” in UvA’s Microsoft Outlook App for the email.

For data management matters (e.g., advice on a data management plan for an awarded grant), contact the data steward on the research data management website.

If you have questions about administrative matters (e.g., ICT), check the following UvA internel resources:

Communication

We have a group mailing list and a Slack channel for general communication purposes. Below are some examples to use them:

  • Share information of events (e.g., interesting talks, PhD events, summer school information, etc)
  • Make important announcements
  • Request something (e.g., filling out a form) from other people
  • Share temporary files with other people (for files that are related to the lab and needed to be stored for a long time, please put the files on our Microsoft Teams channel)

For sharing upcoming events, we have a shared Microsoft Outlook calendar. In general, you can put events that are related to the lab or for a group of people on the calendar. Below are some example events to put on the calendar:

  • Special lab events (e.g., social gathering, Xmas party)
  • Thesis defense events for lab members
  • Interesting talks that PhD students may be interested

Lab Files

For sharing files that are related to the entire lab (or many people), we have a Microsoft Teams channel. One benefit of sharing files in this way is that the storage space is very large, and we will know where the files are for the long term. This is for putting and sharing files that are related to the entire lab. For sharing files within a very small number of people (e.g., paper writing), it is still better to use your own way (e.g., via personal Google Drive). Below are some examples of usage:

  • Share documents (e.g., pdf or docx files) with the entire group, such as administrative matters
  • Share photos (e.g., those from social events) with the entire group
  • Archive project related documents, such as research ethics reviewing documents or meeting notes

For sharing private files or data that may require version control, we have a GitLab. Ask Yen-Chia Hsu if you want to have access. Below are some examples of usage:

  • Archive teaching materials for a course

Lab Website

Our lab website is hosted in this repository. Please contact Yen-Chia Hsu if you want to add your paper to the lab publication list, or if you want to add news (e.g., your paper is accepted at a conference) to the lab page.

Lab Meeting

We have one regular lab meeting every week. During summer, the meetings are typically less frequent or in a simplified format. Please check the Excel file that is pinned on our Slack channel for the meeting information (e.g., meeting time, meeting location, the virtual meeting link, etc). If you want to join the meeting in person, check the room number on the Slack channel. Usually, the meeting room is on the 3rd floor in the LAB42 building.

If you have questions about meetings, please contact the meeting coordinator, Fatemeh Gholamzadeh.

Lab meetings are primarily used to share work-related matters. But you are also encouraged to share non-work related things. Before the meeting, we usually have a group lunch together at around 12:00, which is used primarily for sharing non-work-related things, but you are also welcome to chat about work-related matters.

Below are the goals of the lab meetings:

  • Have a place to share general announcements
  • Get to know each other’s work
  • Initiate collaboration and stimulate a sense of group
  • Practice giving presentations
  • Share visions of the group’s activities

In response to these goals, we have restructured the group meeting format on October 18, 2023. Our meeting now contains five components, as listed below with their frequencies.

  • Announcement: every meeting
  • Scientific Presentation: once every 2 weeks
  • What’s on Your Mind Session: once every 4 weeks
  • Thematic Session: once every 4 weeks
  • Strategic Session: once a year

The subsections below provide details for each component.

Announcement

  • This component is always at the beginning of every lab meeting for anyone to announce lab matters that are not easy to share or communicate via Slack.

Scientific Presentation

  • This component is for sharing scientific work using slides on the screen.
  • The style can be formal or informal, chosen by the presenter. The formal style is similar to presentations at international conference venues, which can also be used as practice talks. The informal style can be used to gather feedback for early ideas interactively with the audience.
  • Each scientific presentation is strictly 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions), meaning there are two presentations in one meeting.
  • After each presentation, a designated PhD student or Postdoc will initiate the first question as the starting point of discussion.

What’s on Your Mind Session

  • This component is for sharing anything informally that is currently on your mind, which can include (but are not limited to) updates of research progress (e.g., problems that you are currently solving), difficulties in working practices (e.g., stress), challenges that you currently encounter, news (e.g., paper rejection/acceptance), etc. 
  • This component was called highlights meeting before, but we decided to change its name to indicate that people can also share the “lowlights” of their current situation. We recognize that things do not always work well, and it is totally fine to share your current struggles, concerns, and complaints.
  • During this session, we will use this slide deck (created by Nanne) as a context and reference to each other’s work.

Thematic Session

  • This component is designed to be highly interactive and flexible to accommodate various topics. It can take the form of group discussions, interactive tutorials, workshops for brainstorming, etc. PhD students and postdocs can also take this session as the opportunity to practice how to give workshops/tutorials at conferences.
  • The default setting is that three “randomly” assigned lab members or volunteers will first give a joint presentation for 20-30 minutes on a specific theme, and the remaining time will be used for group discussions or activities. A senior staff member can also initiate a thematic session and have two other lab members support the senior staff to work on the topic. It can also be initiated by a group of lab members who share similar interests, concerns, or needs.
  • The themes can cover a wide range of topics. Below are some examples (but are not limited to them).
    • Tutorials/discussions of working practices (e.g., time management issues, work-related stress, ways to mentor Master student projects, ways to deal with emails, scientific communication to stakeholders, tips for navigating international conferences, lab culture)
    • Presentations of one sufficiently generic paper (or three papers that give different views on a common topic) that the assigned team members or volunteers find interesting.
    • Tutorials/workshops on using a software tool, platform, or package (e.g., how to use the computing cluster, how to build a Jupyter Book website, how to run user studies on a crowdsourcing platform).
  • This new component was introduced during the restructuring of the meeting format on October 18, 2023. The thematic sessions are still at the experimental stage, requiring constant input from all lab members to refine the format and practice.

Strategic Session

  • This component is for senior lab staff members (Marcel, Nanne, Yen-Chia, Zeno, Stevan) to share visions on the group’s research portfolio for the coming period, or any other strategic topic.

Find a Meeting Room

From April 2023, it is now possible to sefl-reserve meeting rooms. To do this, you need to first create a Microsoft Outlook calendar event using your @uva.nl account. Then, you can specify the room that you want to reserve or use the room finder by clicking on the “Search for a room or location” box on the user interface when creating the calendar event.

Below is a table showing the room that people in IVI (i.e., the Informatics Institute) can reserve, as well as the capacity (number of people). To search for the room, enter (or copy/paste) the text in the “Room” column in the table below to the location search box on the user interface when creating the calendar event. The “Lab42” building means the address “Science Park 900”, and the “904” building means the address “Science Park 904”.

Building Room Capacity
Lab42 ASP L3.03 6
Lab42 ASP L3.04 6
Lab42 ASP L3.05 6
Lab42 ASP L3.08 8
Lab42 ASP L3.11 6
Lab42 ASP L3.26 6
Lab42 ASP L3.33 25
Lab42 ASP L3.36 50
904 ASP 107 F1.15 24
904 ASP 107 F3.20 18
904 ASP B1.25 24
904 ASP B1.49C 16
904 ASP C3.163 21
904 ASP C4.174 30

Note: If a meeting is canceled, please make sure that you also cancel the meeting event on the calendar to make the room available to other people.

Besides the above-listed rooms that require reservations, you can also use the following rooms without booking. Just walk in to use the room if no one is using it. You may need to use your UvA badge to unlock the room. Typically these are small meeting rooms for at most 6 people.

  • Lab42 L4.02
  • Lab42 L4.09
  • Lab42 L4.26
  • Lab42 L4.48
  • Lab42 L4.51
  • Lab42 L5.18
  • Lab42 L5.44
  • Lab42 L5.49
  • Lab42 L5.54
  • Lab42 L5.64
  • Lab42 L6.05

When in doubt, contact the IVI secretary office by email.

For PhD Students

For administrative matters regarding PhD students, you may need to fill out some forms and send the forms to the secretary office (or even need to get a signature from Marcel). IVI has created a seperate channel for PhDs. Below are two important links:

Here is the information of the UvA PhD program. Below are some other PhD handbooks: