The symposium, to be held in Rio de Janeiro, November 8-10, examines the enormous promise of AI technologies as well as the risk that uneven access to AI may amplify digital inequalities across the world.
The daylong symposium brought together eight doctoral candidates who presented their ongoing work in front of their peers and also before a panel of faculty who provided feedback on the presented material and manner of presentation. An informal setting allowed students to meet one another and get to know about one another’s research. Students selected for the symposium received a grant for travel, hotel, and registration.
“Preparing for this symposium gave me an opportunity to rethink my past research projects and connect the dots together,” says Li. “I had a lot of inspiring conversations with the diverse faculty panel and students. It is also a great honor to present and share my research to the HCI (human computer interaction) community.”
Li presented his thesis work on incorporating physics-based simulation into two relatively new research areas: computer-generated acoustics and computational fabrication. The work has particular implications for animation, immersive environments, and fabricating and tagging 3D objects.
In projects involving sound simulation, Li has worked to closely integrate visual and audible components, so one is a natural extension of the other. Algorithms and tools he developed automatically generate sounds from the animation itself, rather than relying on pre-recorded sounds created apart from the animation. For virtual reality environments, he has developed a real-time sound engine that responds to user interactions with realistic and synchronized 3D audio to create a more realistic virtual environment.
Li’s research into simulated sound is also enabling new design tools for 3D printing. In a well-received paper from last year, Li and his coauthors describe a computational approach for designing acoustic filters, or voxels, that fit within an arbitrary 3D shape. At a fundamental level, acoustic voxels demonstrate the connection between shape and sound; at a practical level, they allow for uniquely identifying 3D-printed objects through each object’s acoustic properties. For this same work, which pushed the boundaries of 3D printing, Li was named a recipient of the Shapeways Fall 2016 Educational Grant.
In his work on computational fabrication research, Li utilized physics-based simulation on light scattering to enable the AirCode system, which uniquely identifies printed objects through carefully designed air pockets embedded just below the surface of an object. Manipulating the size and configuration of these air pockets causes light to scatter below the object surface in a distinctive manner that can be exploited to encode information. Information encoded using this method allows fabricated objects to be tracked, linked to online content, tagged with metadata, and embedded with copyright or licensing information. Under an object’s surface, AirCode tags are invisible to human eyes but easily readable using off-the-shelf digital cameras and projectors.
Li expects to graduate in 2018 and looks forward to future exciting research challenges in audio/visual computing and computational design tools. He is also interested in integrating his research into real-world products and applications.
Dingzeyu Li entered the PhD program at Columbia’s Computer Science Department in 2013 after graduating in the top 1% of his class at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where he received a Bachelor’s of Engineering in Computer Engineering.
The paper presented the first outdoor augmented reality system using GPS position
tracking with a see-through head-worn display. Before the era of smartphones,
ubiquitous GPS, and Wi-Fi, the Touring Machine, which included a backpack stuffed
with electronics, let users navigate Columbia’s campus, overlaying names of buildings
and academic departments on buildings viewed through the user’s head-worn display,
and allowing users to select a department to explore its website on a hand-held display
wirelessly connected to the internet.
Cited 1257 times as of November 2017, the paper was authored by Professor Steven Feiner, Blair MacIntyre (PhD ’99, and now Professor in the School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech), Tobias Höllerer (PhD ’04 and now Professor of CS, UC Santa Barbara), and Tony Webster (now Lecturer in Finance, SEAS and Clinical Associate Professor of Real Estate, NYU). Both MacIntyre and Höllerer were Feiner’s PhD students at the time of the paper.
Dean Boyce's statement on amicus brief filed by President Bollinger
President Bollinger announced that Columbia University along with many other academic institutions (sixteen, including all Ivy League universities) filed an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York challenging the Executive Order regarding immigrants from seven designated countries and refugees. Among other things, the brief asserts that “safety and security concerns can be addressed in a manner that is consistent with the values America has always stood for, including the free flow of ideas and people across borders and the welcoming of immigrants to our universities.”
This recent action provides a moment for us to collectively reflect on our community within Columbia Engineering and the importance of our commitment to maintaining an open and welcoming community for all students, faculty, researchers and administrative staff. As a School of Engineering and Applied Science, we are fortunate to attract students and faculty from diverse backgrounds, from across the country, and from around the world. It is a great benefit to be able to gather engineers and scientists of so many different perspectives and talents – all with a commitment to learning, a focus on pushing the frontiers of knowledge and discovery, and with a passion for translating our work to impact humanity.
I am proud of our community, and wish to take this opportunity to reinforce our collective commitment to maintaining an open and collegial environment. We are fortunate to have the privilege to learn from one another, and to study, work, and live together in such a dynamic and vibrant place as Columbia.
Sincerely,
Mary C. Boyce
Dean of Engineering
Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor