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Type o

f Talk: Colloquia

Speaker/Affiliation: Ming C. Lin/Dept of Computer Sc

ience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Talk Audience: UTC

S Faculty, Graduate Students, Undergraduate Students and Outside Interest

ed Parties

Date/Time: Wednesday, May 9, 2012, 11:00 am

Locatio

n: PAI 3.14

Host: Don Fussell

Talk Title: Fast Simulation of Comp

lex Phenomena Using Hybrid Models

Abstract:
From turbulent fluid flo

w to chaotic traffic patterns, many phenomena observed in nature and in so

ciety show complex emergent behavior on different scales. The modeling and

simulation of such phenomena continues to intrigue scientists and researche

rs across different fields, from computational sciences, traffic engineer

ing, urban planning, to social sciences. Understanding and reproducing th

e visual appearance and dynamic behavior of such complex phenomena through

simulation is valuable for enhancing the realism of virtual scenes and for

improving the efficiency of design evaluation. This is especially important
for interactive applications, where it is impossible to manually animate

all the possible interactions and responses beforehand. In this talk, we i

ntroduce several hybrid models that synthesize together macroscopic models

of the large- scale flows and local representations of small-scale behavior

s to capture both the aggregate dynamics and fine-grained details of such p

henomena with significantly accelerated performance on commodity hardware.

Some of the example dynamical systems that I will describe using these hybr

id techniques include turbulent fluids, granular flows, crowd simulation

, traffic visualization, and sound synthesis. I conclude by discussing som

e possible future directions.

Bio:
Ming C. Lin is currently John R.

& Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the Unive

rsity of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. She obtained her B.S., M.S.,
and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Universi

ty of California, Berkeley. She received several honors and awards, inclu

ding the NSF Young Faculty Career Award in 1995, Honda Research Initiation
Award in 1997, UNC/IBM Junior Faculty Development Award in 1999, UNC Het

tleman Award for Scholarly Achievements in 2003, Beverly W. Long Distingui

shed Professorship 2007-2010, Carolina Womenï¿∏s Center Faculty Schola

r in 2008, UNC WOWS Scholar 2009-2011, IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technica

l Achievement Award in 2010, and eight best paper awards at international

conferences. She is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE.

Her research interests i

nclude physically-based modeling, virtual environments, sound rendering,
haptics, robotics, and geometric computing. She has (co-)authored more t

han 230 refereed publications in these areas and co-edited/authored four bo

oks. She has served on over 120 program committees of leading conferences a

nd co-chaired dozens of international conferences and workshops. She is cur

rently the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and

Computer Graphics, a member of 6 editorial boards, and a guest editor for
over a dozen of scientific journals and technical magazines. She also has

served on several steering committees and advisory boards of international

conferences, as well as government and industrial technical advisory commi

ttees.