At a glance... http://www.cs.umbc.edu/glances/gavl
Graphics, Animation, and
Visualization Laboratory
University of Maryland Baltimore County
Baltimore, Maryland USA

GAVL is the UMBC Graphics Animation and Visualization Laboratory, whose purpose is to provide a specialized environment for department research into scientific visualization, computer animation, rendering, 3D interaction, and virtual reality applications. This page contains links to GAVL researchers and projects.

UMBC's mission is to focus on science, technology, engineering and public policy. The suburban campus of 10,400 students is located in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, providing easy access to both metropolitan areas and the numerous federal agencies, industrial research centers, and consulting firms. A new on-campus technology center houses a number of technology start-up firms. UMBC's funding of grants, awards and sponsored research exceeds $36M per year.

GAVL's Research facilities are excellent. The laboratory is housed in a new building devoted to engineering and computer science. The CSEE Department has an extensive research computing facility that includes a large network of UNIX workstations (SGI, Sun, and IBM), large computer servers (SGI, Sun), and PC Workstations. GAVL has its own graphics intesive resources, including an SGI Onyx RealityEngine2, several high end SGI graphics workstations, several Logitech sonic 3D input devices, Polhemus 3Space magnetic field trackers, and several pairs of Sterographics CrystalEyes stereo shutter glasses. Access to Super-computing facilities is through the University of Maryland Institute of Advanced Computer Science (SP-2 and CM-5) and the San Diego Supercomputing Center Consortium. UMBC's University computing systems for instructional and research use consists of UNIX and VMS systems and include two 20-processor SGI Challenge-XL systems, numerous SGI Crimsons, seventy-three Indigo graphic workstations, a new VAX 4000/500, a Cray YMP-EL and many PC and Mac workstations. Some related laboratories include the Laboratory for Advanced Information Technology, the Imaging Research Center, the Center for Architecturs for Data-driven Information Processing, and the Remote Sensing, Signal, and Image Processing Lab;



GAVL's research scope covers virtually all aspects of computer generated imagery. Our research is funded by external grants and contracts from industry and government agencies, including NSF, DOD, and NASA. Recent papers and project descriptions are available on-line from the GAVL web page at http://www.cs.umbc.edu/gavl/. Some recent and ongoing projects include

Graduate research and study can be pursued by enrolling in the MS or PhD degree programs in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or Information Systems. For applications of more information contact

For more information, contact

David Ebert, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; PhD, Ohio State. Research interests include realistic interactive volumetric visualization; procedural modeling; modeling natural phenomena; advanced rendering and animation techniques; perceptual issues; and volumetric rendering.

Chris Shaw, Adjunct Assistant Professor UMBC, Assistant Professor University of Regina; Ph.D., University of Alberta. Research interests include virtual reality and two-handed 3D user interfaces for visualization and the design of free-form surfaces. He is also co-architect of the MR Toolkit.

Edward Bedwell, Research Assistant. B.S., University of Maryland Baltimore County. Research interests include volume rendering, procedural texuring and modeling techniques, digital cinema, advanced illumination, and computer graphics software engineering. Edward is currently seeking his M.S.

Lee Butler, Research Assistant. Army Research Labs. Research interests include procedural techniques for computer graphics and realtime rendering. Lee is currently a Ph.D. candidate.

Eleanor Boyle Chlan, Research Assistant. M.S., University of Maryland Baltimore County. Research interests include grammar-based modeling of plant growth. Eleanor is currently a Ph.D. candidate.

James Kukla, Research Assistant. B.S., University of Maryland Baltimore County. Research interests include procedural techniques for texturing, modeling and animation, digital cinema, advanced illumination models, and camera-based rendering. James is currently seeking his M.S.

Linglan Zhang, Research Assistant. M.S., University of Maryland Baltimore County. Research interests include volume rending, physically based modeling, animation, volume visualization, artificial life simulation and neural networks. Linglan is currently a Ph.D. candidate.

Affiliates

Ethan Miller, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; PhD, Berkeley. Mass storage systems, parallel file systems, information retrieval, parallel computing, and computer systems.

Charles Nicholas, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; PhD, Ohio State. Electronic document processing, software engineering, and intelligent information systems.

Jenny Preece, Ph.D. , Professor and Chairperson Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Randy Rohrer, Government Associate, Department of Defense. M.S., Johns Hopkins University. Research interests include information visualization and implicit modeling. Randyis currently a Ph.D. candidate at George Washington University

Eric Schmitt , Government Associate, Army Research Labs, High Performace Computing Resource Center.

Michael Grasso, Ph.D. , Corporate Associate, President/Senior Computer Scientist, Segue Biomedical Computing. Adjunct Professor UMBC CSEE.

http://www.cs.umbc.edu/glances   (12/97)