• Explore
    • Contact Us
  • Faculty
  • Research
    • Research Areas
    • Research Centers
  • Graduate Degrees
    • Computer Science Programs
    • Current Graduate Students
  • Undergraduate Degrees
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Seminar Series
    • Distinguished Lecture Series
    • Research Showcase
  • Apply Now
    • Undergraduate Admissions
    • Graduate Admissions
    • Faculty Candidates

Professor Zhao Receives NSF Grant to Develop Tools for Improved Virtual Reality

August 21, 2018

How can we provide users with an accurate impression of the terrain and sky when they experience in-flight simulation, or a detailed view of various decorative materials such as wood or metal when they explore virtual rooms? Assistant Professor of Computer Science Shuang Zhao has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) award of $500,000 to address this issue.

Zhao’s grant, “Predictive Material Appearance Modeling at Multiple Scales,” aims to overcome the current obstacle of trying to work across multiple scales when building highly immersive virtual realities. “The goal is to develop new computational tools capable of predictively reproducing material appearance at greatly varying physical scales,” he explains. “Successful development of these tools will bring high-fidelity materials with fine-grained details — fabrics or animal fur, for example — into computer-simulated virtual realities.”

To maximize the impact of the work, Zhao will release the entire software architecture as open source, making it readily available to designers, retailers, developers, educators, artists and students. Furthermore, he will present the findings at workshops and high-profile conference tutorials and will leverage the new appearance modeling-techniques to develop pedagogical tools (using VR, for example) “for outreach to high-school students (especially minorities) to foster interest in STEM.”

— Shani Murray

« “Channel Influencer Spotlight: BitTitan’s Geeman Yip On Why the End of the World Isn’t So Bad” (CS alumnus Geeman Yip profiled)
Professor Singh Awarded Two NSF Grants to Advance Machine Learning »

Latest news

  • Identifying the Building Blocks of Attention in Deep Learning March 21, 2023
  • Faculty Spotlight: Jennifer Wong-Ma and the Power of Community March 20, 2023
  • Computer Science Ph.D. Candidate Takami Sato Named Public Impact Fellow March 14, 2023
  • Irani Builds New Collaborations as Associate Director of the Simons Institute March 6, 2023
  • UC Irvine Partners With Linux Foundation to Welcome New Open Source Projects from Peraton Labs to Scale 5G Security March 3, 2023
  • © 2023 UC Regents
  • Feedback
  • Privacy Policy