Prior to joining eBay’s EPIC Design Lab / Human Interface Group in 2012 and Google in 2017, my graduate research at UC Santa Cruz’s Expressive Intelligence Studio and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo focused on connecting non-technical creators to complex computational systems—spanning visual authoring environments for AI-driven interactive drama, autonomous virtual character realism, finite-speed-of-light rendering, and real-time physically-based animation.
Visual Comic-Storyboard Authoring & Runtime Analysis for Plan-Based Interactive Drama
A completely visual, storyboard-driven authoring environment for plan-based interactive narratives, paired with runtime story-space heatmaps and social-physics planner suggestions.
A Friendly Graphical Authoring Environment for Author-Goal Based Story Generation
An accessible interactive narrative authoring tool built on the UNIVERSE planning model, used in university courses and interactive storytelling research.
Defining, Designing, and Evaluating Believable AI Background Avatars in Virtual Worlds
Reactive ABL behavior-tree agents designed to blend convincingly into hybrid human/AI virtual environments, evaluated in a multi-patron social scenario in Second Life.
Light Transport and Sensor Modeling at a Finite Speed of Light (30 Billion FPS)
A physically-relevant generalization of Kajiya's rendering equation accounting for finite speed-of-light propagation and time-of-flight sensor modeling.
Hybrid Example-Based 3D Facial Mesh Synthesis from Sparse Scan Data
ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 research combining a sparse 3D scan dataset with learned geometric basis variation to synthesize novel facial types, expressions, and speech visemes in real time.
A Real-Time Visual Interface for Analyzing and Experimenting with Physically-Based Animations
Master's thesis and CAINE 2007 paper presenting an interactive 3D simulation environment with dynamic force visualization and live parameter manipulation for thin-shell cloth/metal physics.
A Dynamically Scalable Three-Tier Master-Slave Architecture for Distributed Raytracing
SEDE 2006 paper and distributed rendering system capable of surviving arbitrary worker node unplugging and non-concurrent server failures with near-linear speedup across 50+ machines.
| Year | Publication & Authors | Venue / Institution | Project | Document |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Wide Ruled 2.0 In-Class Presentation & System Overview | UC Santa Cruz Lecture Slides (February 2013) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | PDF ↗ |
| 2012 | Evaluating Realism for Virtual Supporting Characters | Technical Report UCSC-SOE-12-04, Computer Science Department, UC Santa Cruz | Supporting Character Realism (SCR) | PDF ↗ |
| 2011 | Intelligent Visual Interfaces for Authoring Generative Narratives (Ph.D. Advancement Document) | UC Santa Cruz Computer Science Department | StoryCanvas & Beyond StoryCanvas | PDF ↗ |
| 2010 | Novice-Friendly Authoring of Plan-Based Interactive Storyboards | Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) | StoryCanvas & Beyond StoryCanvas | PDF ↗ |
| 2009 | Storyboard Authoring of Plan-Based Interactive Dramas | Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) Doctoral Consortium | StoryCanvas & Beyond StoryCanvas | PDF ↗ |
| 2009 | Interactive Story Generation for Writers: Lessons Learned from the Wide Ruled Authoring Tool | Digital Arts and Culture (DAC) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | PDF ↗ |
| 2009 | Step-by-Step Tutorial: Creating an Interactive Story in Wide Ruled 2.0 | NUS Interactive Storytelling Curriculum Guide | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | PDF ↗ |
| 2009 | Understanding Video at 30 Billion Frames Per Second with Transient Rendering | Bay Area Vision Meetup (BAVM 2009) Poster | Transient Rendering | PDF ↗ |
| 2008 | Transient Rendering | Technical Report UCSC-SOE-08-26, Computer Science Department, UC Santa Cruz | Transient Rendering | PDF ↗ |
| 2007 | Wide Ruled: A Friendly Interface to Author-Goal Based Story Generation | International Conference on Virtual Storytelling (ICVS), pp. 26–37 | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | PDF ↗ |
| 2007 | Facial Type, Expression, and Viseme Generation | ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 Posters (San Diego, CA), Article 34 | Facial Type, Expression, and Viseme Generation | PDF ↗ |
| 2007 | Interactive Thin Shells: A Model Interface for the Analysis of Physically-Based Animation | Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering (CAINE 2007), pp. 128–134 | Interactive Thin Shells (ITS) | PDF ↗ |
| 2007 | Interactive Thin Shells (Master's Thesis) | California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo | Interactive Thin Shells (ITS) | PDF ↗ |
| 2006 | A High Population, Fault Tolerant Parallel Raytracer | Proceedings of the ISCA 15th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE 2006), pp. 122–127 | Fault-Tolerant Parallel Raytracer | PDF ↗ |
| Package / Release | Project | Platform | Size | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wide Ruled 2.0 — Release 3.61 (Full Package) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Windows (.NET 3.5+) | 41.1 MiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Wide Ruled 1.0 — Release 8.1 (Final Java Release, Mar 2008) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Cross-Platform (Java JRE 1.5+) | 653 KiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Wide Ruled 1.0 — Release 8.0 (Jun 2007) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Java JRE 1.5+ | 636 KiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Wide Ruled 1.0 — Release 6.0 (Jun 2007) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Java JRE 1.5+ | 615 KiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Wide Ruled 1.0 — Release 5.0 (May 2007) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Java JRE 1.5+ | 609 KiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Wide Ruled 1.0 — Release 4.0 (May 2007) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Java JRE 1.5+ | 609 KiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Wide Ruled 1.0 — Release 3.0 Updated (May 2007) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Java JRE 1.5+ | 611 KiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Wide Ruled 1.0 — Release 2.0 (May 2007) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Java JRE 1.5+ | 603 KiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Wide Ruled 1.0 — Release 1.0 (Initial Release, May 2007) | Wide Ruled & Wide Ruled 2.0 | Java JRE 1.5+ | 591 KiB | ZIP ↓ |
| FacePoser Interactive 3D Viewer & Dataset (faceposerdemo.zip) | Facial Type, Expression, and Viseme Generation | Windows (x86 / OpenGL) | 80.6 MiB | ZIP ↓ |
| Interactive Thin Shells v1.0 Executable & Sample Meshes | Interactive Thin Shells (ITS) | Windows (SSE2) | 511 KiB | ZIP ↓ |