Kevin Gross Email & Phone Number

Boulder, Co & Minneapolis, Mn

Dreaming up novel photo and video experiences and creating the computational tools needed to bring these dreams to life.

Come on now... you know I can't say what I do... this is Apple! Rest assured that it's really super-cool and you know you're going to need to have it as soon as you know what it is :)

You Go Mountain creates high-performance photography software. You Go Mountain's first product, Panogaea, uses the computational power of the GPU to enable realtime manipulation and remapping of large panoramic images. Panogaea is available on the Mac App Store.

Conceived, implemented and delivered algorithms and software for assessing the perceptual image quality of multi-camera imaging systems for the automotive industry.

Principal duties include R&D, concept optical design, design for manufacturing, tolerance analysis, and opto-mechanical engineering for miniature camera modules and extended depth of field imaging systems.

My dissertation research focused on assessing and optimizing tomographic imaging systems for tumor detection tasks. The importance of this research lies in developing both the theory and computational framework for improving our ability to detect tumors in tomographic images. For this work I created a software toolkit that predicts how well a given tomographic imaging system can be used to detect a known object embedded in a random inhomogeneous background in the presence of Poisson noise. Specifically this research was concerned with arbitrary SPECT imaging systems consisting of an arbitrary number of multiple-pinhole cameras viewing a small-animal sized object from arbitrary viewpoints in arbitrary magnification configurations. In other words, this research applies to a very general class of SPECT imaging systems. This software was designed to run in parallel on large Beowolf computer clusters and was used to assess and optimize several imaging systems in use at the Center for Gamma Ray Imaging at the University of Arizona for the express purpose of maximizing the ability of the imaging systems to detect tumors.Milestones achieved in this research included:1) Deriving rigorous mathematical models for tomographic SPECT imaging systems.2) Creating numerical methods that were both extremely fast and accurate for simulating arbitrary tomographic SPECT imaging systems3) Developing statistical methods for measuring the detection-task relevant information content in tomographic image data sets. This was based on Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to compute the detection task performance of the Bayesian Ideal Observer.4) Creating fast C++ algorithms that run in parallel for implementing the previous milestones.5) Applying the numerical algorithms to assess and optimize the SPECT imaging systems employed at the Center for Gamma Ray Imaging.6) Summarizing and presenting this research to the medical imaging community through papers and conferences.

In addition to the usual coursework associated with the optics master's degree I worked as a research associate at the Gedanken Laboratory at the optical sciences center. This research focused on numerical and theoretical studies of Bose-Einstein condensates, which are a special state of matter that can exist at extremely cold nano-kelvin temperatures. Specifically my research was concerned with finding the ground state of a coupled lattice of spinor Bose-Condensates that interact via magnetic dipole-dipole interactions. To find the ground state I employed numerical genetic algorithms. This research culminated in a publication in the journal Physical Review A.

As an applied mathematics graduate student I focused my course work on dynamical systems and nonlinear optics. While an applied mathematics student, and later as a beginning optical sciences student, I worked as a research assistant at the Arizona Center for Mathematical sciences focusing on theoretical and numerical studies of pattern formation in wide-aperture lasers.

In addition to research and coursework I also taught five separate undergraduate mathematics classes, which included preparing and delivering all lectures in addition to all grading homework sets / exams and holding office hours. The teaching added a lot to my overall workload but I hold this experience as my most rewarding throughout my graduate school career.

Ph.D., Optical Sciences

M.S., Optical Sciences

M.S., Applied Mathematics

B.A., Mathematics & Physics