Wen Wu is a fifth-year Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute, where he is working on his thesis on multimedia technologies for landmark-based vehicle navigation, advised by Jie Yang. His research interests include multimedia and machine vision and their real-world applications. Wen received his undergraduate degree at Tsinghua University in China and his Master’s degree from the National University of Singapore.

The intended area of study of Wen’s V-Unit project is obesity, a condition in which the natural energy reserve, stored in the fat of humans and other mammals, is increased to such a point that it promotes serious pathologic conditions. Accurate and passive acquisition of dietary data from free-living individuals is essential for a better understanding of the etiology of obesity and the development of effective weight management programs. Currently, self-reporting is the main method for data acquisition. Despite its wide application using questionnaires and structured interviews, numerous studies have demonstrated that data obtained by self-reporting seriously underestimate food intake, and thus do not accurately reflect the habitual behavior of individuals in real life. Currently, accurate computer-based programs for food recognition do not yet exist. This project proposes to collect an image database of 100 fast foods sold by 10 well-known fast food companies, and apply it in the development of algorithms to identify foods and food portions from such video images.