Distinguished Lecture Series

Computational research transforms the sciences (physical, mathematical, life or social) not just by empowering them analytically, but mainly by providing a novel and powerful perspective which often leads to unforeseen insights.

The MyLifeBits project aims to put all personal documents and media online. We have been capturing and storing personal articles, books, correspondence (letters and email, CDs, memos, papers, photos, pictures, presentations, movies, videotaped lectures, telephone calls, and all web pages visited.

Recently NVIDIA has claimed that their graphics processors (or GPUs) are improving at a rate three times faster than Moore's Law. For many years the performance of SGI graphics workstations was increasing at roughly 75% per year.

We envision an Office of the Future in which images are displayed on walls and other surfaces to provide an immersive environment with a sense of common presence among local and distant participants and their shared work objects. Much of the tele-immersion portion of our research has been part of a

Computer animations and virtual environments both require a source of motion for characters and objects in the environment. We are exploring simulation as a possible solution to this problem.

Art, in various forms, has been around for about 50,000 years. Computer Graphics has been around for about 50. Both aim (at least in part) to create pictures, often for the purpose of generating some reaction in the mind of the viewer.

Graphics processors are smaller, faster, and more full-featured today than even Moore's law predicts they should be. In spite of this dramatic increase in performance, the basic elements of graphics hardware have remained the same for over 30 years.

Assume each of two parties has something, deliverable electronically, the other wants. Then, a fair electronic exchange is a protocol guaranteeing that either both parties get what they want, or none of them does. (E.g., in certified e-mail, the Recipient should get the Sender's mail if and only if

Digital Geometry, large polygonal meshes coming from digitizing of complex geometry, is the fourth wave of multimedia after sound, images, and video.