Topic: Computer Graphics in the AI Age

Speaker: Prof. Baoquan Chen, Peking University

Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Time: 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Venue: Room 101, Teaching Complex C

Language: English

Host: Prof. Baoyuan Wu, CUHK-Shenzhen

Abstract:

Physicist Feynman once said: “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” The principle mission of computer graphics (CG) is to create/synthesize a digital world, which, according to “the father of CG,” also Turing Award winner, Ivan Sutherland, “… is to make that (digital) world look real, act real, sound real, feel real.” Whilst the central objective of Artificial Intelligence is to understand the world and be able to act in it. After 60 years, CG has yet to fully achieve is mission, whilst the current AI, even in its heyday, still cannot understand and act in the real world with sufficient competence. In this talk, I will illustrate the important opportunity that CG and AI mutually advance each other. Putting in the simplest form, CG is able to offer an indispensable ‘playground’ for embodied AI agents, while the tools of AI make Sutherland’s seemingly far-fetched vision ever closer to the reality.

Speaker Profile:

Baoquan Chen is a Professor of Peking University, where he is associate dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence. His research interests generally lie in computer graphics, 3D vision, visualization, and human-computer interaction. He has published 200+ papers in international journals and conferences, including 60+ papers in ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), and won several best paper awards in prestigious conferences, including SIGGRAPH Asia 2023, SIGGRAPH 2023 (Honorary Mention), and IEEE Visualization 2005. Chen has served as associate editor of ACM Transactions on Graphics and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Graphics, conference steering committee member of ACM SIGGRAPH Asia and IEEE VIS, conference chair of SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 and IEEE Visualization 2005, as well as program chair/committee member of numerous conferences in the visualization and computer graphics fields.

Chen served as the Chief Scientist of Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Visual Entertainment, Beijing Film Academy (2016-2021). He is a guest professor of the School of Art, Peking University. Chen is the recipient of 2003 NSF CAREER award, 2004 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), and 2014 Outstanding Award of Chinagraph. Chen received an MS in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University, and a PhD in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. For his contribution to spatial data visualization, he was elected IEEE Fellow in 2020, and was inducted to IEEE Visualization Academy and ACM SIGGRAPH Academy in 2021 and 2024, respectively.