Class Presentations by Students

Each student is expected to lead a lecture of his/her choice of topics, with the instructor's apporval. All students are required to meet the instructor on one-to-one basis to discuss the lecture materials in detail prior to the presentation. One week before the scheduled presentation, s/he will be expected to submit a draft version of the presentation materials and an initial treatment of the selected topics. The instructor will provide timely feedback about the pre-talk. Reading materials and/or discussion issues will be posted on the course web site, at least one day prior to each lecture. All class members will be expected to have read the listed readings, by the start of the relevant class.

Important Deadlines:

  • By Sept 18, 2007 - Choose a presentation topic and inform the instructor
  • One week before the presentation - Submit a draft of presentation materials
  • One lecture before the presentation - Hand out copies of reading materials, if not available online
  • One day before the presentation - Post the presentation materials on the web
  • Instructions for posting the lecture notes, reading materials, etc.


    Here is the list of topics to be presented by students in the chronological order:

  • Kinetic Data Structures for Collision Detection by Sean Curtis (Tues, Oct 16, 2007)
  • Collision Detection for Deformable Models by Xin Huang (Tues, Oct 16, 2007)
  • Articulated Body Dynamics: Basics by Will Moss (Thurs, Oct 25, 2007)
  • Articulated Body Dynamics: Recent Techniques by Vishal Verma (Thurs, Oct 25, 2007)
  • Articulated Body Dynamics with Contact Handling by Sachin Patil (Tues, Oct 30, 2007)
  • Control of Articulated Bodies by Georgi Tsankov (Thurs, Nov 1, 2007)
  • Physically-based Statistical Models for Natural Human Motion by Tao Yu (Tues, Nov 6, 2007)
  • Constraints & Path Following by Stephen Guy (Thurs, Nov 8, 2007)
  • Physically-based Deformable Body Models by Nick Dragon (Tues, Nov 13, 2007)
  • Space deformations & Skeleton driven deformations by Catalin Constantin (Tues, Nov 13-20, 2007)
  • Simulating Hair Dynamics by Jamie Snape (Tues, Nov 20, 2007)
  • Physics-Based Medical Image Registration by Huai-Ping Lee (Tues, Nov 20-27, 2007)
  • Real-time Simulation of Tissue Deformation/Cutting by Mert Sedef (Tues, Nov 27-29, 2007)
  • Simulating Granular Material by Hengchin (Yero) Yeh (Thur, Nov 29, 2007)
  • Modeling of Plants by by Joshua Markwordt (Tues, Dec 4, 2007)
  • Sound Synthesis by David Millman & Zhimin Ren (Tues, Dec 4, 2007)
  • Geometrically-based Sound Propagation by Micah Taylor (Thur, Dec 6, 2007)

  • Each student presentation will be graded based upon:

  • Advanced Preparation According to the Specification (40%)
  • Analysis and Discussion of the Materials (40%)
  • Style and Clarity of the Actual Presentation (20%)