Bill Sears Colloquia - Fall 2006

The Bill Sears Club is an informal series of talks intended to give CAM students an idea of the research interests of various CAM-affiliated faculty. First and second year students are especially encouraged to attend. If you are interested in giving a presentation, please contact Chris Scheper (cjs73@cornell.edu) or Andrew Kemple (akemple@cam.cornell.edu)

Bill Sears colloquia take place on Wednesdays, 12:30-1 p.m. in 657 Rhodes Hall, with lunch served beforehand.

• Wednesday, Oct. 11 - Professor Andy Ruina, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
  Time: 12:30-1pm, with sandwiches at 12pm.
  Title: How do people and machines walk
  Abstract: Mostly using videos, I'll show some of our ideas about how people and machines walk. What's the future? Optimization, optimization, optimization.

• Wednesday, Nov. 29 - Professor Doug James, Computer Science
  Time: 12:30-1 p.m., with pizza at 12 p.m.
  Title: Reduced-coordinate deformable models
  Abstract: Discrete deformable systems have millions or billions of degrees of freedom in practical applications, but can often exhibit various degrees of spatial and temporal redundancy. Reduced-coordinate shape descriptions can be exploited for our computational benefit in a variety of ways. Using videos and the whiteboard I'll describe how reduced-coordinate approaches can benefit shape parameterization, subspace integration, and collision processing, and mention open research issues.