Alark Joshi 1000 Hilltop Circle, UMBC Baltimore, MD 21250 Phone: 410-455-8935 alark1@umbc.edu http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~alark1

Curriculum Vitae PDF

• Instructor - CMSC 435 - Introduction to Computer Graphics, University of Maryland Baltimore County - Spring 2005.
• Teaching Assistant - CSE/ISE333, User Interface Development, State University of New York at Stony Brook - Spring 02, Fall 02, Spring 03.
• Teaching Assistant - CS5551, User Interface Design, University of Minnesota Duluth - Fall 2000.
• Teaching Assistant - CS5721, Computer Graphics, University of Minnesota Duluth - Spring 2000.
• Teaching Assistant - CS2521,Computer Organization, University of Minnesota Duluth - Spring 2001.
• Teaching Assistant, CS2511, Software Development using C++, University of Minnesota Duluth - Fall 99/2000.

	Pointillism-based visualization of attribute change in time-varying data We explore the use of pointillism-based painterly techniques inspired by Seurat to visualize attribute change in time-varying data. Visualizing change in attribute values such as temperature, humidity and so on for datasets that do not change position is challenging. This work deals with visualizing the change by sampling each timestep in a specified interval to get representative brush strokes on the canvas. The techniques work well to convey varying trends in the data over time.
	Exaggerated shading for volumetric data This project extended the exaggerated shading technique to accentuate surface detail for volumetric data. Surface data in medical & hurricane data was accentuated by adapting the techniques in the original paper to volume visualization. Linear-regression based gradient computation was used in place of central differences method. Bilateral filtering was used to compute multiple smoothed scales of gradients instead of Gaussian blurring. The techniques were incorporated into a hardware accelerated raycaster. The images from L to R show visualization of cloud water in a hurricane with raycasting, raycasting with lighting and with exaggerated shading. The rightmost image with exaggerated shading shows a break in the hurricane eyewall.
	Image processing on the GPU Some source code for basic image processing using the GPU. Smoothing, Edge detection using Sobel filter, Laplacian 3x3 and 5x5 kernel is implemented in the fragment shader. Any comments/suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Click for more information and source code.
	Visualizing Internal Structure of Hurricane Katrina using GPU-based raycasting. Jeremy Shopf and I worked with Dr. Lynn Sparling at the Physics department in UMBC to visualize hurricane Katrina simulation data. The primary aim was to provide interactive three-dimensional rendering using standard volume rendering techniques. This hardware-accelerated raycaster has been implemented using GLSL shaders on a GeForce 6800.
	3D reconstruction of transgenically expressed beta-catenin in mammary epithelial cells detected by immunofluorescence Minoti Hiremath from NYU and I worked on a project to help them test the effects of beta-catenin on mammary development and tumorigenesis. For this stabilized beta-catenin was expressed in the mammary gland under the mouse mammary tumor virus long terminal repeat promoter (MMTV-LTR). This image demonstrates 3D reconstruction of transgenically expressed beta-catenin in mammary epithelial cells detected by immunofluorescence. Beta-catenin is clearly visible along the lateral cell borders. However, nuclear beta-catenin is more difficult to discern.
	Advanced Illumination on the GPU Implemented a program to have multiple objects with different shaders in a scene. The Ashikhmin lighting model, the Banks lighting model and Gooch’s NPR lighting model was implemented for objects in the same scene using different shaders for each. The shaders were developed using Cg on a GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card.
	Skin shading using two-pass pseudo-subsurface scattering on the GPU Created Cg shaders for the two-pass pseudo-subsurface scattering skin. The first pass uses a vertex shader to unwrap the object into texture space and a fragment shader to compute the per-pixel lighting. The results of this pass are stored in a texture for use in the second pass. The final pass uses several accesses to the lighting texture to create the simulated skin.
	Shading techniques using Renderman Implemented a program to render a scene using the Renderman renderer. Displacement, surface and light shaders were used to explore different shading techniques. For the light shader, the Ashikhmin model was implemented.
	Hardware-Accelerated Painterly Rendering on the GeForce FX 5600. This was a part of my Masters thesis at the Computer Science department at SUNY Stony Brook. We have implemented the Painterly Rendering with Curved Brush Strokes paper and are improving the method using some image processing techniques.
	Hardware-Accelerated Volume Rendering with Non-photorealistic Enhancements This project was implemented as a part of my internship in the Imaging and Visualization Department at Siemens Corporate Research. The software was developed using 3D texture mapping capabilities of the GeForce card and was implemented using the Cg language. At SCR, I also implemented a method to perform fast convolution on images and volumes on the GeForce FX 5600 card.
	Volume Illustration: Nonphotorealistic Rendering of Volume Models Click here for the results and ppt. Implemented a Volume Renderer which incorporated Non-photorealistic techniques to accentuate and enhance the visualized volumes. It was implemented in OpenGL using FLTK (Fast Light Toolkit). Techniques like silhouette enhancement, boundary enhancement, oriented fading, distance color blending, feature halos and tone shading were incorporated into the volume renderer to obtain perceptually better views of the volumes being rendered.
	Fast Volume-Preserving Free Form Deformation Using Multi-Level Optimization Implemented a program to simulate Volume-preserving Free form Deformation of objects using OpenGL. The volume could be deformed using mouse movements and then the program would iteratively minimize the volume and eventually preserve it using Augmented Lagrangian method. Click here for the results and ppt.

• Illustration-inspired Visualization, April 2007 at the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering.
• Illustration-inspired techniques for time-varying data visualization, at the IBM Graphics and Visualization Student Symposium 2006 at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, NY.
• Illustration-inspired Volume Rendering, April 2006 at the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering.
• Conducting Research at the Undergraduate level, January 2007 at the Vishwakarma Institute of Technology(VIT), Pune, India.
• Conducting Research, January 2007 at the Pune Insitute of Computer Technology (PICT), Pune, India.
• Illustration-inspired techniques for time-varying data visualization, December 2005 at the UMBC CSEE Department Student Speaker Colloquium.
• Seminar Presentations at the University of Minnesota

• Third Prize in the Poster category for the Exaggerated shading for volumetric data at the Annual CSEE Research Conference 2007, held at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
• First place at UMBC's Annual Business Plan Competition for 2007.
• Third Prize in the Annual Greater Baltimore Technology Council's Mosh Pit 2006 business plan competition. Our team consisted of Sandor Dornbush, Zach Radtka, Jeremy Shopf, Robairta Romiti and myself.
• Senator of the Year for the Graduate Student Association for the 2005-06 academic year.
• Third Prize in the Poster category for the Illustration-inspired visualization of hurricane structures at the Annual CSEE Research Conference 2006, held at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
• Third Prize for the presentation entitled Illustration-inspired techniques for time-varying data visualization, Graduate Research Conference 2005 held at the University of Maryland Baltimore.
• Best Graduate Teaching Assistant, Computer Science department, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2001-2002, 2002-2003.
• Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant of the year in the Computer Science Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth, 2000-2001.

• Organized the First Annual Doctoral Colloquium at IEEE Visualization 2006 and IEEE VAST 2006 conference with Penny Rheingans, William Pike and Richard May.
• Reviewer for IEEE Visualization conference 2005, 2006, 2007.
• Reviewer for the Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games conference 2005.
• Student Volunteer at the IEEE Visualization 2004, 2005 conference.
• Student Volunteer at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 conference.
• Student Volunteer at the I3D 2005 - Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games at Washington DC.
• Vice President for the Graduate Student Association for the 2006-07 academic year.
• Senator for the 2005-2006 academic year, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department at UMBC.
• External Customer for the CMSC 345: Introduction to Software Engineering for Spring 06, Fall 06 and Spring 07.