CSAIL Event Calendar

Geometry in Motion

ABSTRACT
To simulate the motion of physical materials, our research group obsesses about the geometry that underlies the physics. What I mean by "the geometry underlying the physics" will constitute a short tutorial at the beginning of my talk. In the second part of this talk, I will lightly survey a few physical domains for which we have developed such "geometric models." I will discuss how the resulting simulation codes have been used in consumer products, feature films, and physics labs.

This talk targets a general graphics audience in tone, and has significant overlap in content with my recent lecture in the MIT Computational Engineering Seminar series, entitled "From Sorcery to Science: How Hollywood Physics Advances Computational Engineering."


BIO
Eitan Grinspun is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University and Director of the Columbia Computer Graphics Group. He was Professeur d'Université Invité at l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris in 2009, a Research Scientist at the Courant Institute from 2003-2004, a graduate student at California Institute of Technology from 1997-2003, and an undergraduate in the Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto from 1993-1997. He was an NVIDIA Fellow in 2001, Everhart Distinguished Lecturer in 2003, NSF CAREER Award recipient in 2007, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 2010-2012, and one of Popular Science magazine's "Brilliant Ten Scientists" in 2011. The technologies his group developed are used in products such as Adobe Photoshop, at film studios such as Disney and Pixar, and in basic scientific research. He has been profiled in The New York Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, and mentioned in Variety. Recent film credits include The Hobbit, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tin Tin.

See other events happening in March 2013