Computer Engineering students John Ivan T. Diaz, Craig Joseph B. Goc-ong, and Kaye Louise A. Manilong (see photo below) won the Best Paper Award for the Oral Session under the AI for Agriculture category during the 10th International Conference on Next Generation Computing (ICNGC) on November 20-23, 2024, at the Holy Angel University, Angeles City, Pampanga, Philippines. 

The team’s award-winning research entitled, “Innovative 3D Model Reconstruction from 2D Stereoscopic Plant Images with Investigation between YOLOv8 and Detectron2 AI Architectures for Plant Class Segmentation,” aims to solve the computer vision challenge of creating a 3D model from constrained stereo images for visualizing plant growth structures. These stereo images will be useful for plant phenotyping.

According to ICNGC’s website, the objective of the conference is to exchange and share knowledge, new ideas, and experiences to accelerate further inventions and innovations of next generation computing technology stemming from various research fields.

The three-day event was organized by the Korean Institute of Next Generation Computing. A total of 40 papers were presented during the Oral Session and another 40 papers in the Poster Session. 

The winning research group was under the advisory and mentorship of Dr. Philip Virgil B. Astillo (adviser) and Engr. Alvin Joseph S. Macapagal (assistant adviser).