CESCG 2016 - Preliminary Program

Modern science is driven by computers (computational science) and data (data-driven science). While visual analysis has always been an integral part of science, in the context of computational science and data-driven science it has gained new importance. In this talk I will demonstrate novel approaches in visualization to support the process of modeling and simulations. Especially, I will report on some of the latest approaches and challenges in modeling and reasoning with uncertainty. Visual tools for ensemble analysis, sensitivity analysis, and the cognitive challenges during decision making build the basis of an emerging field of visual data science which is becoming an essential ingredient of computational thinking.

Bibliographical Details

Torsten Möller is a professor at the University of Vienna, Austria, since 2013. Between 1999 and 2012 he served as a Computing Science faculty member at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He received his PhD in Computer and Information Science from Ohio State University in 1999 and a Vordiplom (BSc) in mathematical computer science from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM, and a member of Eurographics. His research interests include algorithms and tools for analyzing and displaying data with principles rooted in computer graphics, image processing, visualization and human-computer interaction.

He heads the research group of Visualization and Data Analysis. He served as the appointed Vice Chair for Publications of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC) between 2003 and 2012. He has served on a number of program committees and has been papers co-chair for IEEE Visualization, EuroVis, Graphics Interface, and the Workshop on Volume Graphics as well as the Visualization track of the 2007 International Symposium on Visual Computing. He has also co-organized the 2004 Workshop on Mathematical Foundations of Scientific Visualization, Computer Graphics, and Massive Data Exploration as well as the 2010 Workshop on Sampling and Reconstruction: Applications and Advances at the Banff International Research Station, Canada. He is a co-founding chair of the Symposium on Biological Data Visualization (BioVis). In 2010, he was the recipient of the NSERC DAS award. He received best paper awards from IEEE Conference on Visualization (1997), Symposium on Geometry Processing (2008), and EuroVis (2010), as well as two second best paper awards from EuroVis (2009, 2012).

Research and practice of computer graphics has witnessed a renewed interest in realistic rendering based on physics-based Monte Carlo light transport simulation. This effort is propelled by the desire to accurately render arbitrary environments with complex geometry, materials and light sources, which is often difficult with the once industry-standard, but now obsolete, ad hoc rendering solutions. For this reason, the movie and archiviz industries now rely on physically-based rendering methods, which poses new challenges in terms of strict requirements on image quality, algorithm efficiency and robustness, as well as usability.

In this talk, I will summarize some of my research contributions in the area of realistic rendering using physically-based light transport simulation that have been adopted by some of the major companies in the field such as Weta, PIXAR or Chaos Group. I will then juxtapose these academic results to my industry experience gained through the design and development of Corona Renderer in the company Render Legion, that I’ve recently co-founded. I will discuss the applicability and relevance of my research results to the world of production rendering for architectural visualization. I will conclude with some open challenges both in research and practice of physically-based realistic rendering.

Bibliographical Details

Jaroslav Křivánek is a researcher and associate professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University in Prague, and a co-founder of the the Render Legion company - developer of Corona Renderer. Prior to these appointments, he was a Marie Curie research fellow at Cornell University, and a junior researcher and assistant professor at Czech Technical University in Prague. Jaroslav received his Ph.D. from IRISA/INRIA Rennes and Czech Technical University (joint degree) in 2005. His primary research interests are global illumination, radiative transfer (including light transport), Monte Carlo methods, and visual perception. His research is driven by the goal of developing novel practical ways of producing realistic, predictive renderings of virtual scenes. The technologies he has co-developed are used, among others, by Weta Digital, PIXAR Animation Studios, or Sony Pictures Imageworks, and, of course, in Corona. In 2014, Jaroslav was selected for the New Europe 100 list, “a list of outstanding challengers who are leading world-class innovation from Central and Eastern Europe for taking computer graphics to the next level.