Title: Computational Design for Bridging Physical and Digital Worlds
Presented By: Changxi Zheng, Columbia University

Abstract:
As digital capabilities permeate the social fabric, not only are physical artifacts consumed by humans, they are also perceived by digital systems. For example, a robot needs to perceive a physical object to manipulate it; an augmented reality app needs to see the physical world to overlay virtual content. While computer vision systems enables the machine to perceive the physical world to a certain extent, significant limitations remain. In this talk, I advocate an alternative path---from a computational design perspective aiming to create a physical artifact simultaneously accessible to both humans and machines. I'll present a number of approaches that we have recently explored. In these approaches, we exploit physical properties in optics, acoustics, and mechanics to embed a digital payload into the essential construction of a physical artifact. The digital payload is invisible to human perception but readable by digital systems.
Designed via these approaches, physical artifacts are inherently connected to digital systems, and new applications and functionalities will be enabled.

Biography:
Changxi Zheng is currently an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University with the Best Dissertation Award and his B.S. from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Changxi's research area is computer graphics, with a particular focus on simulation methods for complex physical systems, the computational models for audiovisual processing, and computational design of structures and materials. The technologies developed by his group have been used in several industries, and his work has been profiled in major media outlets, including NPR, BBC, Forbes, WIRED, Popular Science, and many others. He has won an NSF CAREER Award, and was named one of Forbes’ “30 under 30” in science and healthcare in 2013. He received the Best Paper Awards from 2016 SCA, 2017 UIST, 2019 ACM Multimedia, among others.