Dr. Scott Schaefer, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, was an invited keynote speaker at the Symposium on Solid and Physical Modeling (SPM 2014) held October 26 - 28 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The symposium focused on mathematical and computational issues that relate to mechanical design, process planning, manufacturing, medicine, games, animation, geology, and virtual reality.
Schaefer's talk, "Aliasing in Solid and Geometric Modeling," explored how aliasing can arise in solid and geometric modeling as well as how to specialize various filtering techniques for such applications to remove aliasing and noise. Additionally, he discussed how geometry can and should influence more traditional signal processing algorithms.
After receiving his doctoral degree in computer science from Rice University in 2006, Schaefer joined the Texas A&M faculty. Schafer teaches courses in computer graphics, game development, geometric modeling, data structures and algorithms, and Introduction to Computing. He is a two-time recipient of the department's Undergraduate Faculty Teaching Excellence Award.
In 2011, Schaefer received the Günter Enderle Award for his paper, "Wavelet Rasterization." He received a NSF CAREER Award for his research in graphics and visualization in 2012. His research interests include graphics, geometry processing, curve and surface representations, and barycentric coordinates. Schaefer has published more than 50 research papers.
Co-located with SPM 2014 was SMI 2014 (Shape Modeling International), held October 28 - 30. SMI publicizes new mathematical theories and computational techniques for modeling, simulating and processing digital representations of shapes addressing researchers, developers, students, and practitioners from a wide range of fields. Both symposia drew other Texas A&M participants: Dr. John Keyser, computer science and engineering professor and associate head for academics, and Dr. Ergun Akleman, a professor in the Department of Visualization at Texas A&M and joint faculty in computer science and engineering.
At SPM 2014, Keyser, executive committee chair of the Solid Modeling Association, and Songgang Xu, a Ph.D. graduate student, presented a poster paper entitled, "Surface Quadrangulation without Global Cuts." At SMI, Akleman, steering committee member of the Shape Modeling International, presented "Block Meshes: Topologically Robust Shape Modeling with Graphs Embedded on 3-Manifolds" co-authored with Dr. Jianer Chen, computer science and engineering professor.