Category: V9

Researchers led by CSE Professor Tajana Šimunić Rosing received a $35 million grant from the Semiconductor Research Corporation to make computing orders of magnitude faster and more efficient. A group of 10 universities will band together and contribute additional funds to create the $50.5 million UC San Diego-led Processing with Intelligent Storage and Memory center, or PRISM. Read More

CSE faculty receive national and international recognition for contributions to their fields and society.

Sameer Samat, a vice president at Google who oversees the Android and Google Play products that reach billions of users, was selected as this year’s CSE Distinguished Alumnus.

Samat, who has a 14-year tenure with Google and two successful startups under his belt, was honored this spring at the fourth annual CSE Research Open House that drew more than 300 faculty, students and CSE community members. As Samat and his classmates developed Source Bank and a second company, Mohomine, they reached out to CSE professors for letters of recommendation.

“I still remember Professor {Bill} Griswold’s letter. He had one line where he said, ‘Sameer is fearless.’ I certainly don’t think I’m fearless,” Samat recalled during a videotaped speech at the Research Open House. “But looking back at the odds of our start-up being successful, I think it does take a certain amount of naiveness and belief that you can do anything. Sometimes that combination is mistaken for fearlessness.” Read More

By Katie E. Ismael and Kimberley Clementi

In 2003, there was Star Control and a mission in outer space. In 2015, Battle Blocks fought for lunch money in the sandbox. In 2019, three hungry animals stole Chef Cheoffrey’s birthday cake; he was determined to catch them all.

Flash forward to 2022. It was demo day for students in UC San Diego’s Computer Science and Engineering Department’s CSE 125 course.

The 2022 edition of CSE 125 featured a timed race between folding chairs and bean bags; a fast-paced beauty pageant where only one race car wins the crown; a farm with a dark twist; a game of cat and mouse; a magical battle in a medieval castle.

In other words, demo day featured five spanking-new, 3D multiplayer games–  the end result of 10  weeks of creativity, imagination, engineering skill and teamwork for CSE students.

As with previous years, the latest teams demonstrated their creations to an audience on the big screen, showcasing the Chairioteers, Skrrt Skirt, Farmers Market, The Meoze Runner and Eternal Ritual games. (Catch them here and read more about the teams here.)

While the 2022 teams certainly had the benefit of 22 years of tremendous technological advancements, some things about CSE Professor Geoff Voelker’s beloved course have remained the same.

We talk to Professor Voelker about CSE 125’s evolution—and consistency—in an ever-changing industry.

What do you enjoy most about teaching this course?

What I enjoy most is providing the opportunity for students to achieve what seems like an impossible goal: to design and implement a multi-player, 3D networked game from scratch in just 10 weeks. It really is a phenomenal achievement, and each year, I’m repeatedly impressed by the creativity, dedication and talent of the students in the class.

How has gaming changed throughout your years of teaching the class?

Short answer: A lot!

The technology has obviously changed immensely since I first started teaching the class.  The hardware today is orders of magnitude more powerful than it was in the early 2000s.  In the early years, groups had to spend significant effort optimizing their code to make their games run reasonably well on old hardware. Today it’s much less of a concern. The hardware platform can comfortably run whatever the students are able to develop in just a 10-week quarter.

The game industry has also changed immensely.

Entirely new markets have been created: the 2000s saw the rise and peak of browser gaming using Flash; when smartphones arrived in the 2010s the mobile gaming market was born; in the mid-2010s Pokémon Go made artificial reality (AR) gaming a worldwide phenomenon.

Entirely new types of games have also been created: two genres that CSE 125 students in particular picked up on were “tower defense games” and “cooperative games” where all of the players work together to solve puzzles or survive the environment.

How have these changes impacted your teaching approach?

Oddly, these changes haven’t impacted my teaching approach much. Modern hardware has made the development process slightly easier, but it’s also the case that students aim for more. And over time I have asked at the start of the quarter whether there is much interest in targeting a different platform (e.g., mobile), but repeatedly students have expressed strong interest in working on the traditional PC platform.

In what ways does the course prepare them for their career pursuits?

In terms of preparation, one of the ways I describe the course is that it provides an opportunity for the students to take everything they’ve learned in their CSE courses and finally apply it to a challenging (and fun!) project. And in doing so, it helps underscore how broad game development is since it draws from so many areas of computer science.

But I think there is a more fundamental way in which CSE 125 prepares students, and it’s not just for the games industry. 

The students learn and apply a variety of technical skills in taking CSE 125, and certainly gain crucial technical experience in designing and implementing a complex system. But I don’t think it’s the technical aspects that benefit the students the most in preparing them for the next step of their careers.

Rather, it’s about working in a group.  At the start of the quarter, I tell the students that half of what they are going to learn is about how to work effectively in a group. I call it the three C’s:

o   how to collaborate

o   how to communicate

o   how to compromise

And in doing all of this (both the technical experience and the group experience), they gain the fourth ‘C’: confidence. I mean confidence in being able to tackle a very complex project working in a team, confidence in creating their own vision and making it a reality, confidence in solving hard problems on their own initiative along the way, confidence that they’ll take with them to the next step.

Are you a gamer? What are your favorites?

I am definitely a gamer. The first game I ever played was Hunt the Wumpus on a TRS-80 my parents rented when I was a kid.

I enjoy a wide variety of games, but particularly like open world games that let you explore interesting worlds created by imaginative teams. Recent examples of games I’ve been thoroughly impressed with are Control and Elden Ring.

By Kimberley Clementi

Pokémon Go. An animated YouTube makerspace. A virtual walk-through of Walt Disney’s office. One is a game. The other two are augmented and virtual realities. Each is a playful, interactive world developed by and within the realm of technology.

And while some may think creating this type of content is just for fun, three UC San Diego Computer Science and Engineering alumni – Edward Wu (B.S. ’04), Shazzy Angulo (B.S. ’15) and Mehul Patel (B.S. ’04) are proving blockbuster games and augmented and virtual realities can make a difference in the real world.

From promoting healthy habits to making computer science more accessible and inclusive, these CSE alum are rewriting the rules of the game. 

Gaming on the Go: Pokémon GO.

 It’s weekend in an urban setting. Cafes and boutiques are bustling with business. On one corner, an ordinary bench has drawn a family, a young couple, a group of college friends. All are intently, gazing at smart phones. The group is quiet, until someone shouts, “I caught a Shiny!”

This scene – now commonplace in cities everywhere – remains a boggler to some. To those in the know, it can only mean one thing: it’s Community Day and fans have gathered to play the smash hit videogame Pokémon GO. 

Introduced in 2016, Pokémon GO is an augmented reality (AR) game based on the popular Pokémon trading cards. The phone app transforms the two-player tabletop game into an active, multi-player game played in the real world, with friends. Anyone, anywhere can join on the go. Hence, Pokémon GO.

The implications of these built-in parameters are not lost on Edward Wu, the leader of Pokémon GO’s technical team and senior product manager at Niantic, the company that makes the game and has turned it into a global cultural phenomenon.  Wu argues that Pokémon GO is more than just a game.

The game’s active and collaborative nature promotes physical and socio-emotional wellness. “It’s about going outside, going on walks and meeting people in the real world,” Wu said.   

The game utilizes location tracking and mapping technology to guide players down city sidewalks to virtual “Pokéstops” and gyms. Along the way, players catch and train new characters, get supplies, battle and earn rewards based on miles walked.  

Just how far have Pokémon players walked collectively since 2016? Some estimates place it north of 14 million miles. That number tallies with more than 500 million downloads since the game launched and over 150 million monthly active users.

Wu says he learned the fundamentals and core algorithms for his engineering role on Pokémon GO while a student at UC San Diego, where he earned dual bachelor’s degrees in computer science and physics. One of Wu’s undergraduate classes was Professor Geoffrey Voelker’s popular CSE 125, aka the “videogame course.”

“Ed is an example for all our students to show that what they’re learning prepares you to go out into the world and make a difference,” said Voelker. “The world is a now a different place because of Pokémon Go.”

By Kimberley Clementi

While the glitz and glam of the Academy Awards attract an international audience each year,  off the red carpet and a few left-brain turns from the famed Hollywood stars an unlikely consortium is gaining recognition within the industry.

Computer scientists, including those from UC San Diego’s Computer Science and Engineering Department, are combining their brainpower with artists, creatives and storytellers to tackle some of filmmaking’s most complex, technological challenges.

Using techniques such as stochastic progressive photon mapping and advances in appearance modeling, computer scientists are working behind the scenes to make memorable animated characters and scenes more life-like on the big screen. Their work illuminates the juncture between mathematical theory and the serious science of film magic.

UC San Diego’s CSE fits right into this picture. Both faculty and alumni have contributed to blockbuster hits such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series, Finding Nemo, Coco, Toy Story 4, Luca and, most recently, Turning Red.

Notably, most of these films have been nominated for an Academy Award. They have netted a CSE professor an Oscar, another professor a nomination and given an alumnus a crucial role in animating characters larger-than-life.

Turning Red: A Frontrunner for 2023 Oscars

Most recently, Pixar’s Turning Red was a contender for the Best Animated Feature Oscar for 2023. The lovable star in this coming-of-age film is 13-year-old Mei Lee, a typical, overachieving teen one minute and a giant panda the next. Each time Mei wrestles with supersized emotional triggers – feelings of anxiety, anger or excitement – she transforms into a supersized red panda.

This switch from teen to panda and back to teen presented a bevy of technical challenges. Animating a bright-eyed girl with colorful clothing, flowing hair and life-like movement created one layer of difficulty. Animating a red panda with fluffy fur added another. Animating the transition back and forth between the two required next-level skill and cutting-edge technology.

Lyon Liew (B.S. ‘03) was the master-mind responsible for this captivating cinematic magic.  Liew, now in his fifth year at Pixar Animation Studios, was the film’s lead technical director for simulation.  With film credits like Coco, Luca and Incredibles 2 already under his belt, Liew faced his greatest simulation challenge to date in Turning Red.

Ironically, this complex and supersized transition was affectionately dubbed with a light-hearted and diminutive moniker: the “poof.” And the “poof” was the biggest animation hurdle Liew and his team needed to address. 

“We had a giant, furry red panda that poofs back and forth from a teenage girl and a group of friends with diverse and unique hairstyles and garments. Plus, they hug all the time,” said Liew, noting that this interaction was nearly as difficult to simulate as the “poof.”

Liew started his career in filmmaking with an internship at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, a hub of research and innovation located on the UC San Diego campus. That was followed by a stint at the Vancouver Film School, where he earned a diploma in 3D animation and visual special effects. But it was an undergraduate CSE course – Intro to Computer Graphics – that helped set Liew on this path.

“I took computer science because I really liked coding, but I never stopped thinking about movie-making,” said Liew. “In my junior year, I took a class with Professor Mike Bailey. It let me see that there is an option to mesh coding with movies.”