Eitan Grinspun

Computer Science Department

Columbia University

"From Sorcery to Science: how Hollywood Physics impacts the Sciences"

 

Abstract

Cinema uses computers to animate physics. Special effects such as explosions and lifelike depictions of imaginary characters are made possible by mathematical and computational models that capture qualitative, characteristic behavior of a mechanical system. This is scientific computing with a twist. I will describe the process by which we derive and compute models of physics, and show actual examples of resulting technologies in film, consumer products, physics, and medicine.

Our research group develops scientific computing tools by focusing on the underlying geometry of the mechanical system. I will describe a process in which we build a discrete picture from the ground up, mimicking the axioms, structures, and symmetries of the smooth setting. I will survey the problems we address using this methodology, such as computing the motion of flexible surfaces, cloth, hair, honey, and solids experiencing mechanical contact. Industry and academia has adopted these methods to improve products such as Adobe Photoshop, films such as Disney's Tangled, train surgeons, and understand nonlinear soft-matter phenomena.

Bio

Eitan Grinspun is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University in the City of New York. He was Professeur d'Université Invité at l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2009, a Research Scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences from 2003-2004, and a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology from 1997-2003. He was an NVIDIA Fellow in 2001, an Everhart Distinguished Lecturer in 2003, an NSF CAREER Award recipient in 2007, and is currently an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow honored by Popular Science magazine as one of the 2011 "Brilliant Ten."

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