Class Presentations by Students

Each student is expected to lead a lecture of his/her choice of topics, with the instructor's apporval. All students are required to meet the instructor on one-to-one basis to discuss the lecture materials in detail prior to the presentation. One week before the scheduled presentation, s/he will be expected to submit a draft version of the presentation materials and an initial treatment of the selected topics. The instructor will provide timely feedback about the pre-talk. Reading materials and/or discussion issues will be posted on the course web site, at least one day prior to each lecture. All class members will be expected to have read the listed readings, by the start of the relevant class.

Important Deadlines:

  • By Sept 30, 2022 - Choose a presentation topic and inform the instructor
  • One week before the presentation - Submit a draft of presentation materials
  • One lecture before the presentation - Hand out copies of reading materials, if not available online
  • One day before the presentation - Post the presentation materials on the web
  • Instructions for posting the lecture notes, reading materials, etc.


    Here is the list of topics to be presented by students in the chronological order:

  • Recent Advances in Deformable Models by Onur Kulaksizoglu (Nov 1, 2022)
  • Hyperelastic Material Models by Nathan Hoffman (Nov 1, 2022)
  • Voronoi Diagrams and Applications in Motion Planning by Bhrij Patel (Nov 8, 2022)
  • Embodied AI and Indoor Navigation Simulators by James Mullen (Nov 8, 2022)
  • Interactive Household Environment Simulator for Embodied AI by Vishnu Dorbala (Nov 10, 2022)
  • Learning-based Simulation and Animation Using GNNs by Caroline Horsch (Nov 17, 2022)
  • Reinforcement Learning for Dynamics Simulation by Brian Cherin (Nov 17-29, 2022)
  • Hybrid Contact Modeling for Contact-rich Robot Manipulation by Praveen Kumar (Nov 29, 2022)
  • Motion Retargeting by Pyone Thant Win (Dec 1, 2022)
  • N-body and Hydrodynamic Simulations in Astrophysics by Zhenning Liu (Dec 1, 2022)
  • AI in Real-time Interactive Simulations for Video Games by Will Chambers (Dec 6, 2022)
  • Traffic Modeling & Simulation by Thomas Wrona (Dec 6, 2022)
  • Brain-Computer Interfaces by Yiting Wang (Dec 8, 2022)
  • Modeling Emotions Using EEG Signals by Xiaowen Qi (Dec 8, 2022)

  • Each student presentation will be graded based upon:

  • Advanced Preparation According to the Specification (40%)
  • Analysis and Discussion of the Materials (40%)
  • Style and Clarity of the Actual Presentation (20%)