About Us


We are a part of the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab (SAIL) at University of Southern California directed by Prof. Shri Narayanan.
At MICA, our objective is to develop quantitative models for media understanding with focus on human-centered applications.
Our goal is to understand representation of humans in media as well connect these attributes to impact of the media in general.

Our Research Directions


Our Objective



Our research emphasis is on speech, video, music, text and multimodal information processing towards applications of multimedia understanding.

Our overarching goal at MICA is to objectively quantify multifaceted details of media content from sights, sounds, words and connect them to impact through computational means.

In Recent News

Female Characters In Films Often..

Female Characters In Films Often "Make No Difference To The Plot", Study Reveals : A study of the language used in almost 1,000 film scripts has shed light again on the chasm that exists between the ways that male and female characters are portrayed onscreen. If womens' roles are removed... [Read More]

Why Hollywood’s female stars..

Why Hollywood's female stars get all the worst lines : A study of the tone of language of characters in nearly 1,000 film scripts has confirmed many assumptions about gender differences in the film industry. Women characters are younger, speak less and if removed from the plot it usually makes... [Read More]

Female characters get all the..

Despite female-led films making more money, study reveals Hollywood tends to give women pointless rolesA study into the language of characters in almost 1,000 film scripts has revealed how sexism is embodied by characters on the silver screen. Using automated tools for linguistic analysis, the research found that women characters... [Read More]

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