Kelly A. Ward Sitterson Hall, CB#3175
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175
(919) 962-1890
wardk@cs.unc.edu
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~wardk

    EDUCATION

    WORK EXPERIENCE

      Research Assistant, GAMMA Group, University of North Carolina, MAY 2001 - PRESENT
      Lead researcher on hair animation, collision detection, rendering, and interactive styling using geometric and simulation levels-of-detail (LODs); Project website: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~wardk/research.html

      Rhythm and Hues, Los Angeles, CA MAY 2003 - AUGUST 2003
      Software Applications Intern
      Researched and co-designed in-house graphics hardware renderer; Wrote fragment and vertex programs for fast viewing of feature film and commercial production effects.

      Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, OR MAY 2002 - AUGUST 2002
      Technical Marketing Engineer Intern
      Worked on physically-based animation optimizations that involved specific Intel Pentium architecture specifications.

      Computer Research Association Distributed Mentor Project
      Research Assistant: Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
      Work involved Monte Carlo calculations for performing integrals; Programs written in Java
      Research Assistant: George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
      Work involved writing a visualization tool for LR parsing in Java       		SUMMER 1999

      SUMMER 1998

    REFEREED PUBLICATIONS
    • Kelly Ward, Nico Galoppo, and Ming C. Lin. Modeling Hair Influenced by Water and Styling Products. Proceedings of Computer Animation and Social Agents, 2004. Project Website (Acrobat)
    • Kelly Ward, Nico Galoppo, and Ming C. Lin. Simulating and Rendering Wet Hair. ACM SIGGRAPH Sketches and Applications, 2004. Project Website (Acrobat)
    • Kelly Ward and Ming C. Lin. Adaptive Grouping and Subdivision for Simulating Hair Dynamics. Proceedings of Pacific Graphics, 2003. Project Website (Acrobat)
    • Kelly Ward, Ming C. Lin, Joohi Lee, Susan Fisher, and Dean Macri. Modeling Hair Using Level-of-Detail Representations. Proceedings of Computer Animation and Social Agents, 2003. Project Website (Acrobat)
      		•


    TECHNICAL REPORTS

    • Kelly Ward, Susan Fisher, and Ming C. Lin. Simplified Representations for Modeling Hair. UNC Technical Report #TR02-020, 2002.
      		•


    INVITED TALK

      Hair Simulation Using Levels-of-Detail. Academia and Interactive Multimedia Event 2003, hosted by SONY Computer Entertainment America, San Diego. August 1, 2003.


    TEACHING EXPERIENCE

      Instructor, University of North Carolina Fall 2004
      Class: Comp 14 - Introduction to Programming
      Responsible for grading, lecturing, student help and all class material including lecture notes, exams, quizzes, homeworks, labs, programming assignments

      Teaching Assistant, University of North Carolina AUGUST 2000 - MAY 2001
      Classes: Introduction to Scientific Computing, Data Structures

      Teaching Assistant, Trinity College FALL 1997 - FALL 1998
      Classes: Introduction to Computer Science, Data Structures and Algorithms, Electricity and Magnetism, Mechanics and Heat, Stars and Galaxies

    COURSE PROJECTS

      Collision Detection for Hair Simulation using Swept Sphere Volumes
      Created framework consisting of a family of swept sphere volumes for detecting collisions between hair and a head or body as well as collisions among hair. Framework allows for interactive simulation of hair.

      Shader for Fur using NVIDIA’S Cg
      Wrote a vertex program and a fragment program for creating furry surfaces using shells offset from an object.

      Dynamic NURBS for String Motion Animation
      Dynamic NURBS are used to model all types of string motion. This includes applying forces to any point along the string and using physical laws of motion to control the resulting behavior of the string.

      Software-Based OpenGL Renderer
      Created graphics engine and software rendering pipeline based on the OpenGL architecture. Features included homogeneous clipping, rasterization, smooth shading, and lighting.

      Using Dynamic NURBS for Physics-Based Wave Motion Modeling
      Used Dynamic NURBS to accurately simulate the motion of waves propagating along a string with two fixed endpoints. Used physics laws and equations to model wave properties, such as constructive and destructive interference.

    RELEVANT COURSES

      Computer Graphics
      Images, Graphics, and Vision
      Geometric and Solid Modeling
      Advanced Image Generation       		Scientific and Geometric Computation
      Computational Geometry
      Physically-Based Modeling, Simulation and Animation
      Software Design and Implementation

    COMPUTER SKILLS

      Languages: C/C++, OpenGL, NVIDIA's Cg, Java, HTML
      Operating Systems/Hardware: Windows Operating Systems, UNIX, MacOS, Linux
      Software: Intel VTune Performance Analyzer, Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, 3D Studio Max, Matlab, Emacs, JDK

    ACTIVITIES and HOBBIES

      Student ACM Vice-President (Trinity College), Drawing needlework, decoupage, videogames, playing the piano, jogging

    REFERENCES

      Available Upon Request