Nathaniel Williams

Master of Science, May 2004
Department of Computer Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Email: than [at] cs.unc.edu

About Than

I attended six different schools during my first 22 years in Charlottesville, VA including Meriwether Lewis Elementary, Western Albemarle High School, and the University of Virginia. I received a Bachelor of Arts in Cognitive Science at UVA while concentrating in computer science and psychobiology. My initial exposure to research was in Peter Brunjes' lab doing research on the olfactory system. I eventually shifted focus to interactive computer graphics and completed an undergraduate thesis under the guidance of David Luebke.

During the two years that I lived in Chapel Hill I worked with Anselmo Lastra on image-based rendering. We installed a Virtual Monticello exhibit for the New Orleans Museum of Art.

After graduate school I returned to Charlottesville and spent a couple of years working as a software engineer. I then spent a great year backpacking in Europe, traveling around the United States, and living in Austin, TX. Since October 2007 I have been back in Charlottesville, again working as a software engineer.

Refereed Publications

• Automatic Image Alignment for 3D Environment Modeling. [slides]
  Nathaniel Williams, Kok-Lim Low, Chad Hantak, Marc Pollefeys, and Anselmo Lastra.
  Proceedings of the 17th Brazilian Symposium on Computer Graphics and Image Processing (SIBGRAPI), Curitiba, Brazil. October 2004.
• Monticello Through the Window. [slides]
  Nathaniel Williams, Chad Hantak, Kok-Lim Low, John Thomas, Kurtis Keller, Lars Nyland, David Luebke, and Anselmo Lastra.
  Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Intelligent Cultural Heritage (VAST), Brighton, UK. November 2003.
• Perceptually Guided Simplification of Lit, Textured Meshes. [slides]
  Nathaniel Williams, David Luebke, Jonathan D. Cohen, Michael Kelley, and Brenden Schubert.
  Proceedings of the 2003 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics (I3D), Monterey, CA. April 2003.
• Comparative Study of Aging in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb.
  Jennifer Mirich, Nathaniel Williams, Daniel Berlau, and Peter Brunjes.
  The Journal of Comparative Neurology, Volume 454, Issue 4, Pages 361 - 372. December 2002.

Personal

• I've played ultimate frisbee since December 2001, including several summer and winter league seasons organized by the Charlottesville Ultimate Disc Organization.
• I enjoy a lot of outdoor activities besides ultimate frisbee, especially hiking, disc golf, soccer, and mountain biking.
• My interest in computers dates back to 1993, when I obtained my first Unix shell account. While in high school I taught myself how to program in Basic on an original IBM PC (model 5150). I created my first webpage in July 1995; not surprisingly, only a couple of the links still work. I first installed Red Hat Linux in June 1998, though now I use Ubuntu.
• I played the electric bass during my last two years at UVA, and I was in a few bands with John Rhoads and Peff King during that time. Our best run was in April/May 2001 when we hooked up with Jesse Dukes to form The Alternators. We recorded Jesse's song "This Olde Honky Tonk Smells Like Death" in my basement apartment on Peff's 4-track. John and Peff have since moved to Atlanta and formed a rockabilly-surf-country band called The Broken Spokes.
• I decided that the bass isn't as much fun when I'm not in a band, so I've been playing acoustic guitar since 2002.