Event Location: Newell Simon Hall 1507
Bio: Changxi Zheng is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. Prior to joining Columbia, he received his M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University, and his B.S. from Shanghai Jiaotong University. His research spans computer graphics, physically-based simulation, computational design, computational acoustics, scientific computing and robotics, with a focus on developing practical and computational methods to produce realistic dynamics and multi-modal sensations and bridging virtual simulation with physical objects. Changxi has been serving as the Associated Editor of ACM Transactions on Graphics, and won the NSF CAREER Award, the Hot Paper Award at HotWireless 2015, the Cornell CS Best Dissertation award in 2012, and was named as Forbes’ “30 under 30” in science and healthcare in 2013.

Abstract: Recently computer graphics has witnessed increasing interests on physics-based sound simulation, an endeavor that exploits physical principles to automatically generate computer animations, audiovisually. In this talk, I will start by briefly showing some of those techniques we developed, and explore what these methods enable us beyond generating virtual effects. In particular, I will present a few recent projects on computational acoustic design—methods that generate desired acoustics by computational design of geometry and material—with the applications on computer animation, personalized 3D printing, HCI, wireless communication, and other engineering fields. Putting this line of research into a larger picture, I will conclude the talk with quick examples on using computational physics techniques to bring virtual effects to reality, even beyond acoustics.