Informatics Seminar on Tuesday, April 21st, 10.30 - Dr. Kai Hormann
Staff - Faculty of Informatics
Start date: 21 April 2009
End date: 22 April 2009
The Faculty of Informatics is pleased to announce a seminar given by Dr. Kai Hormann
TITLE: Digital Geometry Processing or How Gauß connected the dots and flattened the cow
SPEAKER: Dr. Kai Hormann, assistant professor, Department of Informatics at Clausthal University of Technology, Germany
DATE: April 21st, 2009
PLACE: USI Università della Svizzera italiana, room SI-006, Informatics building (Via G. Buffi 13)
TIME: 10.30
ABSTRACT:
In 1801 Carl Friedrich Gauß was able to correctly predict the future location of the newly discovered asteroid Ceres by applying his famous method of least squares, which continues to be one of the most important approximation algorithms. In the first part of my talk I will review this method, explain how it can be used for reconstructing curves and surfaces, and discuss several improvements and alternatives.
The second part of my talk is dedicated to surface parameterization and its various applications, e.g. texture mapping and surface remeshing. Again, this problem is rooted in the work of Gauß, in particular his "theorema egregium" which was published in 1827, because a consequence of this "remarkable theorem" is that a general curved surface cannot be parameterized without distortion. Hence, the goal in surface parameterization is to minimize this inevitable distortion somehow.
Both topics are central to the interdisciplinary research field of digital geometry processing, which combines concepts from computer science, applied mathematics, and engineering for the efficient acquisition, reconstruction, optimization, editing, and simulation of geometric objects. Applications of geometry processing algorithms can be found in a wide range of areas, including computer graphics, computer aided design, geography, and scientific computing. I will conclude my talk by giving an outlook to the future challenges of this fascinating research field.
BIO:
Kai Hormann is an assistant professor for computer graphics in the Department of Informatics at Clausthal University of Technology, Germany. His research interests are focussed on the mathematical foundations of geometry processing algorithms as well as their applications in computer graphics and related fields.
Dr. Hormann received his PhD from the University of Erlangen in 2002 and spent two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Multi-Res Modeling Group at Caltech, Pasadena and the CNR Institute of Information Science and Technologies in Pisa, before joining the faculty at Clausthal University in 2004. During the winter term 2007/2008 he was a visiting associate professor at Freie Universität Berlin.
HOST: Prof. Mehdi Jazayeri
