Class Presentations by Students

Each student is expected to co-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 Feb 25, 2025 - 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:

  • Cloth Simulation: An Introduction by Wenxuan Wu (April 8, 2025)
  • Introduction to Supervised Policy Learning (Diffusion Policy) Robotics by Amisha Bhaskar and Anukriti Singh (April 10, 2025)
  • Collision Avoidance by Tanapoom Laoaron (Apri 15 2025)
  • Data Driven Crowd Simulations with Neural Methods by Nithin Parepally (April 15, 2025)
  • Physics-based World Models for Autonomous Driving Planning and Controls by Anh Nhat Nhu (April 17, 2025)
  • Traffic Simulation by Grace Cai and Christopher Lim (April 17-22, 2025)
  • Pedestrians Intent, Gaits, and Emotions by Pranav Asthana and Hiba El Oirghi (April 22, 2025)
  • Modelling Snowfall and Snow Adhesion to Roads by Nitin Kanchinadam and Sophie Tsai (April 24, 2025)
  • Monte Carlo Methods for Rendering & Simulation by Alexander Coppens (April 29, 2025)
  • Advancements in Explosion Animation by Hengyuan Qi (April 29, 2025)
  • Collisions in Real Time by Daniel Brown (May 1, 2025)
  • Differentiable Fluid Simulation by Hee Yoon (May 1, 2025) Structure-Aware 4D Reconstruction for General Scene Animation by Haiyang Ying (May 1, 2025)
  • Physics-Based Simulation with 3D Gaussian Splatting Representation by Yonghan Lee and Dynamic Gaussian Splatting by Allen Tu (May 6 2025)
  • Animating Rotating Objects at a High RPM by Michael Morcos and Physics-Based Simulation and Control of Drones by Naitri Rajyaguru (May 8, 2025)
  • Modelling 3D Digital Holography by Anand Idris and Differentiable Simulation for Tactile Sensing by Kelin Yu (May 13, 2025)

  • 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%)