Oliver Cossairt

Research

Publications

Patents

Teaching

Courses

Postdoctoral Researcher
Computer Science
Columbia University
450 Computer Science Bldg
500 W 120 St
New York, NY 10027

Office: CEPSR 617
Telephone: 646-620-6400
Email: ollie AT cs.columbia.edu

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Computer Science Department of Columbia University. I am a member of the CAVE lab, advised by Prof. Shree Nayar. In September 2011, I completed my dissertation on The Limits and Tradeoffs in Computational Imaging. From September 2006-2011, I was a doctoral candidate at Columbia University under the advisement Prof. Shree Nayar and Prof. Peter Belhumeur. I received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship from 2008-2011. From 2003-2006, I worked as an Optical and Software Engineer, managing a NIST ATP research initiative to develop next generation 3D displays for a Actuality Systems. In 2003, I recieved an M.S. from the MIT Media Lab, where I worked with the Spatial Imaging Group and wrote my thesis on View-Sequential 3D Displays.

Research Interests

My research interests are optics, computer vision and computer graphics. I am particularly interested in novel imaging and display systems that combine a creative use of optical devices and sensor technology to enable new functionality in cameras and displays, including:

Computational Photography for leveraging novel optical designs and image processing together to enable new capabilities in conventional cameras, such as extended depth-of-field, digital refocusing, super-resolution, and measuring high dimensional appearance.
Computer Vision for measuring depth or spectral characteristics that inform a higher-level understanding about a scene, such as geometry or material properties.
Computational Displays for displaying images with an unprecendented sense of realism by allowing viewers to observe the appearance of objects in a natural and intuitive manner.

Awards and Honors

Best Paper Award, "Spectral Focal Sweep: Extended Depth of Field from Chromatic Aberrations", ICCP 2011.
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Sep. 2008 through Sep. 2011.

Recent Research

Tradeoffs and Limits in Computational Imaging
[pdf]

PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, Sep. 2011

A Scaling Law for Computational Imaging with Spherical Optics
[project page] [pdf]

with Daniel Miau and Shree Nayar, to appear in JOSA.

Gigapixel Computational Imaging
[project page] [pdf]

with Daniel Miau and Shree Nayar, ICCP 2011.

Draw the curtains: Gigapixel images create highly revealing snapshots,
Scientific American article (Jan 6, 2011),

Spectral Focal Sweep
[project page] [pdf] [supplementary images]

with Shree Nayar, ICCP 2010.

ICCP 2010 Best Paper Award

Diffusion Coded Photography for Extended Depth of Field
[project page] [pdf] [supplementary images] [derivations]

with Changyin Zhou and Shree Nayar, SIGGRAPH 2010.

Depth from Diffusion
[project page] [pdf]

with Changyin Zhou and Shree Nayar, CVPR 2010 (Oral Paper).

Light Field Transfer
[project page] [pdf]

with Shree Nayar and Ravi Ramamoorthi, SIGGRAPH 2008.

Previous Research

Occlusion Capable Volumetric 3D Display
[project page] [pdf]

with J. Napoli, S.L. Hill, R.K. Dorval, G.E. Favalora, Applied Optics 2007.

3D Display Design
[project page]

3D Displays I designed as an engineer and manager for a NIST ATP research initiative developing next generation 3D displays. Actuality System 2003-06.

View Sequential Displays
[project page] [pdf]

Master's Thesis, MIT Media Lab, 2003

Publications

Graphics and Vision

O. Cossairt, "Tradeoffs and Limits in Computational Imaging", PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, Sep. 2011
O. Cossairt, D. Miau, and S.K. Nayar. "A Scaling Law for Computational Imaging with Spherical Optics", OSA Journal of the Optical Society of America (JOSA), Nov. 2011.
O. Cossairt, D. Miau, and S.K. Nayar. "Gigapixel Computational Imaging". IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP), Mar. 2011.
O. Cossairt, C. Zhou, and S. K. Nayar. "Diffusion Coded Photography for Extended Depth of Field". ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), Jul. 2010.
O. Cossairt and S. K. Nayar. "Spectral Focal Sweep: Extended Depth of Field from Chromatic Aberrations". IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP), Mar. 2010.
C. Zhou, O. Cossairt, and S. K. Nayar. "Depth from Diffusion". Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Jun. 2010.
O. Cossairt, S. K. Nayar, and R. Ramamoorthi. "Light Field Transfer: Global Illumination Between Real and Synthetic Objects". ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), Aug. 2008.

3D Displays

O. Cossairt, J. Napoli, S.L. Hill, R.K. Dorval, G.E. Favalora, "Occlusion Capable Volumetric Three-Dimensional Display". Applied Optics, Mar. 2007, vol. 46, pp 1244-1250.
J. Napoli, S.R. Dey, S. Stutsman, O. Cossairt, T.J. Purtell, S.L. Hill, "Imaging Artifact Precompensation for Spatially-Multiplexed 3D Displays". SPIE Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems XIX Proceedings, Jan. 2008.
W.S. Chun, J. Napoli, O. Cossairt, R.K. Dorval, D.M. Hall, T.J. Purtell II, J.F. Schooler, Y. Banker, G.E. Favalora, "Spatial 3D infrastructure: display-independent software framework, high-speed rendering electronics, and several new displays". SPIE Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems XVI Proceedings, Jan. 2005.
O. Cossairt. "View-Sequential Displays", Master's Thesis, MIT Media Lab, Aug. 2004.
O. Cossairt, C. Moller, S.A. Benton, and A.R.L. Travis. "Novel view sequential display based on DMD technology". SPIE Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems XV Proceedings, Jan. 2004.
C. Moller, O. Cossairt, S. A. Benton, A. Travis. "Investigation into Screenless 3-D TV". SPIE Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems XIV Proceedings, January 2003.

Patents

Granted

W. Chun, O. Cossairt. "Data processing for three-dimensional displays". US Patent 7,525,541, Dec. 2009.
G. Favalora, O. Cossairt. "Theta-parallax-only (TPO) Displays". US Patent 7364300, Apr. 2008.
O. Cossairt, G. Favalora, M Thomas, and R. Dorval. "Optical systems for generating three-dimensional images" US Patent 7,283,308; Oct. 2007.
O. Cossairt, J. Napoli. "Radial multiview three-dimensional displays". US Patent 7,277,226; Oct. 2007.

Pending

S.K. Nayar, O. Cossairt, C. Zhou, "Systems, Methods, and Media for Recording an Image Using and Optical Diffuser", US Patent app. 2011091358, Jan 2011.
O. Cossairt. "Image Enhancement for Three-dimensional Displays". US Patent app. 20070201133, Aug. 2007.
G. Favalora, W. Chun, O. Cossairt, R. Dorval, M. Halle, J. Napoli, M. Thomas. "Scanning Optical Devices and Systems" (pending). US Patent app. 20050285027, Dec. 2005.
O.Cossairt, G. Favalora. "Minimized-thickness Angular Scanner of Electromagnetic Radiation". US Patent app. 20060244918, Nov. 2005.
O. Cossairt, M Thomas, RK Dorval. "Optical Acanning Assembly". US Patent app. 20050270645, Jun. 2005
O. Cossairt, T.J. Purtell, and S.L. Hill. "Optically Enhanced Image Sequences". US Patent app. 2006048984. May 2005.

Teaching Assistant

COMS 6998: Computational Photography, Spring 2011.
COMS 6998: Computational Photography, Spring 2010.
COMSS 4731: Computer Vision, Spring 2010.
COMS 4771: Machine Learning, Fall 2009.
COMS 6732: Computational Imaging, Spring 2007

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Courses

Fall	2008	COMS W4231	Analysis of Algorithms, I
Spring	2008	APMA E4300	Numerical Methods
Spring	2008	COMS W4701	Artificial Intelligence
Fall	2007	COMS W4115	Programming Languages and Translators
Fall	2007	COMS W4731	Computer Vision
Spring	2007	COMS W4771	Machine Learning
Spring	2007	COMS W4995	Discrete Differential Geometry
Spring	2007	COMS E6732	Computational Imaging
Spring	2007	COMS W4118	Operating Systems, I
Fall	2006	CSEE W4824	Computer Architecture
Fall	2006	COMS W4160	Computer Graphics