2022Delivered a significant update to our course ,"Dynamic Deformables: Implementation and Production Practicalities", which was presented at Siggraph 2022 in Vancouver. Lead Simulation team in Tailoring Tools improvements, collision detection optimization and a strands prototype. 2021Delivered a significant refactor of our simulator's parallelism to handle the increased complexity of production assets on current productions. Enaged multiple team members on features to increase morale, quality and disseminate information within the group. Initiated effort to explore machine learning techniques to augment our simulation pipeline. 5/2020-12/2020Lead a large effort to improve our Tailoring Tools that are used to create garment assets. Proactively identified problems for current productions and took action to address them.Improved team collaboration on deliverables through design discussions, better task distribution and code reviews.Co-authored a Siggraph 2020 course on simulation techniques for deformable objects.

Working with industry leading external parties to design of a Usd schema to describe the physical properties of objects for simulation. A first version of a schema for rigid body simulation has been released. We are currently working on expanding the schema to describe deformable simulation of

I've returned to Pixar to continue my efforts of delivering world-class tools to empower our artists and streamline their workflows. I worked with Ted Kim in research to deliver volume fibers which give anisotropic control to our tetrahedral simulations and also to provide a skin sliding solution that was much more efficient than our previous Physbam approach. In addition to these improvements of our cloth simulator, I've started developing components of a new workflow that will better leverage our animation software Presto.

I worked in Adobe Research to further develop early efforts related to photogrammetry, such as portrait relighting. In addition to my development duties, I lead an effort on the Research Engineering and Infrastructure Committee to raise the code quality bar in research. This effort resulted in holding a full day Code Quality Workshop with nearly 100 attendees across sites in San Jose, San Francisco and Seattle. We taught attendees how to use source control, write unit tests and the value of writing quality code through a number of hands-on exercises. The feedback we received from the attendees was very positive and I am hopeful that the event will be repeated for many years to come.

2017-2018:I collaborated with our research group and refactored the cloth simulator in order to support simulation of tetrahedral meshes with their invertible element model. This allows coupled simulations between volume and cloth meshes. This work is also being heavily used as a pre-sim deformation on characters to allow for cleaner simulation of the garments in a second pass. I initiated work with a research intern, Tuur Stuyck, to explore an implementation of Space-Time optimization to control simulations. In addition to this work, I've been trying to mentor other research interns by performing code their reviews.Worked with TDs to build consensus and implement a major redesign of 2D and 3D of UV scales for rest shape control used in tailoring and animation. The new technique was delivered mid-production for Incredibles 2 and was rapidly adopted. 2016-2017:I deployed a highly refactored/performant version of the code without causing any regression or negative impact to production. I also took the initiative to create new constraint types for our TDs to use and pushed the development to make simulation restarts more robust, which enables more efficient work flows for shot work.2015-2016:Refactored large portions of the in-house cloth system to support our 2017 production, Coco, which had very demanding simulation needs. By improving threading performance and memory access patterns, the simulator now runs at 2X performance on the same resources and scales better with additional threads. In addition to performance, the robustness of the simulator to handle complex collision scenarios has been greatly improved. This has resulted in the ability to have more complex garments than have been previously possible and the ability for animators to start interacting with the simulations directly without always requiring the assistance of technical directors. All of this work has enabled the simulation department to do more at a reduced cost.

Developed core libraries for representing, manipulating and visualizing explicit and implicit geometry of coronary segmentations. Architected and implemented large portions of an automatic pre-processing pipeline to test our algorithms. Took responsibility for delivering a suite of algorithms that robustly generate quality meshes compatible with the CFD solver.Collaborated with other groups and wrote tools to improve their productivity. Case analysts use to spend about an hour evaluating the quality of their segmentation results. Developed a tool that automates this task and brings the time down to about a minute. Working with Vivek Bhatia, in case processing, developed a system that saved hundreds of hours of manual labor, saving the company money and removing the possibility of human error in the evaluation. This tool was also used to validate the progress of the algorithms during the development of the new workstation. Listed on two awarded patents:"Systems and methods for modeling changes in patient-specific blood vessel geometry and boundary conditions.""Method and system for determining treatments by modifying patient-specific geometric models"

Implemented a general implicit particle system for simulating character dynamics of short hair, floppy ears and pony tails. Worked closely with CFX Artists and TDs to create a proprietary cloth system/work flow exposed as a Maya plug-in. Wrote an efficient parallelized solver with a novel jacobian formulation to guarantee stability at very large time steps even in the presence of fast motion. Developed a strategy of proximity queries and continuous collision detection to keep cloth penetration free even in complex mult-layer/multi-garment scenarios. Features included a wide variety of hard and soft user constraints, paintability of attributes, keyable collision sets, solver scale, cache management, etc. Co-chaired a course on collision detection techniques at Siggraph’04.Film credits include: Kung Fu Panda 2, Mega Mind, How to Train Your Dragon, Monsters vs. Aliens, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar 2, Bee Movie, Shrek 3, Flushed Away, Over The Hedge, Madagascar, Shrek 2.

While working at PDI I taught an introduction class in computer graphics algorithms to students in the VGP program. All of my students landed jobs in the industry upon graduation. I'd like to think I had some part in that, but it was their hard work and that of my fellow instructors.

Worked on the SDK team of the world’s leading real-time rigid body dynamics system. Specifically worked on constraints and graphical displays to allow users to debug their setup. Independently started R&D on finite element modeling of deformation and fracture. Presented a sketch on procedural approach for fast fracture effects at Siggraph’03.

Worked on collision detection and dynamics of a cloth-like system for the film "Reign of Fire." Presented results of this work at Siggraph’02 Sketches and Applications. Developed texturing tool for a subdivision surface pipeline used on "Chicken Little."