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2011

Several DMD students were part of winning teams in the PennApps Hackathon (yellow names):

Most Amusing app: KaraokeJS - Bezhou Feng, Thomas Ly, Eric O'Brien, David Wang

Audience Choice Award, First Place: Beer Snob - Kyle Hardgrave, Jennie Shapira, Dave Sharples, Kevin Shen

Dude, They Totally Should Have Won a Prize: Moody - Sam Appelbaum, Ryan Gormley, Eliot Kaplan, Gary Menezes

Jason Merrin, DMD '13, was awarded the Creative Concept Award in the CWA International Screenwriting Contest for his film, Sleepwalkers.

Daniel Garcia, Tiantian Liu, Adam Mally, and Kaitlin Pollock were awarded the the Diane Chi Summer Research Award for their work on Selecting Agents for Narrative Roles, creating better methods for group-controlled action, reconstructing the ancient city of Pachacamac, and A Data-Driven Appearance Model for Human Fatigue, respectively.

Congratulations to Joe Kider, Kaitlin Pollock, and Alla Safonova for receiving an honorable mention at the ACM/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation for their paper, A Data-Driven Appearance Model for Human Fatigue.

Samantha Raja, DMD ’10 and CGGT ‘11 and Kaitlin Pollock, DMD '11, were the winners of last summer’s Diane Chi Summer Research Award, and are now both published authors.

Samantha Raja, Joe Kider and Norm Badler had their paper, "Fruit Senescence and Decay Simulation" published in the International Journal Computer Graphics Forum (CGF) as part of the Eurographics 2011 Proceedings.

Kaitlin Pollock, Joe Kider and Alla Safonova had their paper, “"A Data-driven Appearance Model for Human Fatigue" accepted to the Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA). SCA will take place in Vancouver in August, 2011, just before the SIGGRAPH conference.

Congratulations to all and special thanks to Diane Chi for her continued support of undergraduate research

Ian Perera, DMD '11, is this year’s winner of the Welton and Dawn Becket Digital Media Design Award. As the leader of the SIGGRAPH Games Division and of the Independent Game Developer Association’s (IGDA) chapter on campus, Ian has provided countless hours of service and tutoring to his peers and the wider games community in Philadelphia. His ability to organize events, share information, and motivate his peers has made him a valued member of the graphics community at Penn. According to Ian, he “originally applied to the Digital Media Design program with the aim of creating compelling virtual experiences through video game programming. However, I soon realized that the believability of these virtual worlds was not so much limited by graphics processing or other technical challenges, but rather from the difficulty in creating dynamic, believable characters that one could interact with using natural language. I then began to focus my studies on natural language processing and cognitive science in an effort to improve interactions with virtual characters through everyday language. I am now involved in research on natural language interfaces for virtual agents and I am pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a focus on natural language understanding and cognitive modeling to study how we might create virtual agents that behave and speak humanly.”

Lu Chen, DMD '11, has been nominated for the James Howard Weiss Memorial Award, which recognizes distinguished academic achievement (minimum G.P.A. of 3.7) and significant leadership in undergraduate activities by members of the senior class. Lu’s commitment to students in computer science has been significant through her involvement in WICS, the Dining Philosophers, SIGGRAPH and as a teaching assistant
to several CIS courses. Again, a committee of students, faculty and staff will make the final selection.

Yiyi Zhou, DMD '11, has been awarded the Penn Engineering Exceptional Service Award. This special award is given by the faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science to recognize and honor outstanding students for their service to the University. The faculty cited Yiyi’s passion and dedication to serving her community through her work with student government, Women in Computer Science (WICS), her role as a freshman and peer advisor, and her efforts to create the first TEDx conference at Penn. Yiyi’s work with TEDxPenn was cited for bringing exciting and novel speakers to the Penn community, and for sharing the conference via live streaming video, video cache and through a beautifully designed web site. If you missed the conference, you can still catch the spirit by visiting the TEDxPenn site.

Kaitlin Pollock, DMD '12, has been awarded the Diane Chi Summer Research Award for her project "Data Driven Exhaustion Model for Human Motion".

Kaitlin Pollock, Yiyi Zhou, Lu Chen, and Ian Perera

Samantha Raja, DMD '10, has been awarded the Diane Chi Summer Research Award for her project "Fruit Senescence and Decay Simulation". She also won first prize in the CIS summer research poster session.

Samantha Raja, DMD '10 and CGGT '11, Joe Kider and Norm Badler had their paper, "Fruit Senescence and Decay Simulation" published in the International Journal Computer Graphics Forum (CGF) as part of the Eurographics 2011 Proceedings.

2010

Four DMD students won major awards within SEAS in the spring of 2010. Lu Chen, then a DMD junior, won the E. Stuart Eichert, Jr. Memorial Prize. The prize is awarded each year to students at the end of their junior year in the Moore School who, in the judgment of the School's faculty, best demonstrate initiative, intellectual attainment, and commitment to the professional practice of engineering. Lu has been a TA in our Intro to Computer Science course and the designer of some of the most creative assignments offered in that class! Lu interned at Google this summer.

Another Moore School award was given to Jon McCaffrey, a DMD junior who qualifies as a senior because of the number of courses he has taken during his three years at Penn. Jon is the recipient of the Walter Korn Award, which is given annually to the outstanding senior in the Moore School who will be continuing on at the Moore School for a graduate degree. Selection of the recipient is made by the Moore School chairs and faculty, in conjunction with the SEAS Associate Dean. Jon interned at Lucas Arts this summer and will sub-matriculate into the MSE in computer science program.

Brynn Shepherd is the winner of the Wolf-Hallac Award, which was established in October 2000 and goes to a graduating female senior from Penn Engineering who is seen as a role model and who has achieved excellence academically. Brynn was cited for her work as a freshman advisor and mentor, as well as for her involvement in building a supportive community for underclasswomen through her work with the Women in Computer Science program (WICS). Brynn graduated with a dual degree in Fine Arts and DMD and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as well. Brynn now works for Facebook.

Also noted for her mentoring and for her various roles within the student SIGGRAPH chapter is Grace Fong, the Dawn and Welton Becket Digital Media Design Achievement Award winner. The award, established in 2004, is presented to the DMD senior who exemplifies the ideals of the DMD program through outstanding achievement, citizenship, and mentoring. Grace’s contributions to the SIG Center, HMS research, and her hours of work with SIGGRAPH made Grace the ideal candidate for this award! Grace is now working for DreamWorks Animation.