Liming Zhao

Email: limingzhao at gmail dot com

Aug. 2009 - present. D. E. Shaw Research, New York, NY
Role: Research Scientist
Design and develop computer softwares on specialized supercomputer (Anton) for computational biochemistry.
Oct. 2006 - Sept. 2007. soVoz Inc. Princeton, NJ.
Role: Lead Researcher in the R&D group
Led the R&D group in designing and developing the Virtual Locomotion Controller (VLC), an immersive user interface/game controller for virtual training and simulation. Using a simple motion capture device, a user can control the locomotion of the virtual character in a simulation environment.
Technologies: C++, ProScena, Gamebryo, Maya, Windows API, OpenGL, Inertial and ultrasonic sensor based motion capture system.
May 2006 - Aug. 2006. soVoz Inc. Princeton, NJ.
Role: Research Intern
Designed and developed an animation/IK system for real-time character control.
Technologies: C++, ProScena, Gamebryo, Windows API, OpenGL.
July 2002 - Sept. 2002. ArcSoft-ZDQ Software Co. Ltd. Hangzhou, China
Role: Software Engineer / Internship
Developed tools for a home video editor.

Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science, 2009
University of Pennsylvania. GPA = 3.90/4.00
M.S. in Computer and Information Science, 2005
University of Pennsylvania. GPA = 3.76/4.00
B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering, 2003
Zhejiang University, China. GPA = 3.8/4.0

High-performance Computing, Computer Graphics, Computer Animation and Computer Vision

SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation Best Paper Award, 2008
ACM SIGACCESS Best Technical Paper Award, 2007
Chu Ke-Chen Scholarship, Zhejiang University, China, 2003 (Highest honor in Zhejiang University)
Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award. Zhejiang University, China, 2003
First Prize, Math Contest in Modeling, China. 2002

Graduate research fellow at the center for Human Modeling and Simulation. Exploring techniques for modeling realistic human motions and analyzing the synthesized motions. Technologies include motion capture, motion planning, motion synthesis, motion graph and motion blending.
The Automatic Motion Selection project. An original algorithm for automatically selecting a minimum size motion graph from a large motion capture database to satisfy user requirements.
The Well-Connected Motion Graphs project. A novel approach to build motion graphs with good connectivity, quick responsiveness and smooth transitions. The well-connected motion graph enables smooth motion synthesis and responsive interactive control applications from motion capture data.
Research at soVoz Incorporation. Designed and developed the Virtual Locomotion Controller (VLC), an immersive user interface/game controller and a hardware platform for virtual training and simulation. Using a simple motion capture device, a user can control the locomotion of the virtual character in a simulation environment.
The Untethered Motion Capture Evaluation for Flight Line Maintenance project. Explored and evaluated the utility of a set of novel motion capture technologies including optical and inertial systems.
A National Science Foundation project: American Sign Language (ASL) Natural Language Generation and Machine Translation. Designed and implemented the ASL visualization through motion planning.
Research with Lockheed Martin Corporation in human modeling test bed. Developed a novel technique to generate real-time collision-free reach planning.
GPU projects. Designed and implemented several general purpose computational tools on GPU, such as a matrix operation toolkit, an image processing toolkit and an image segmentation tool, as well as several GPU shaders.
Research in computer vision. Explored techniques for image segmentation using Normalized Cut.
Real-Time Realistic-Looking 3D Facial Expression Animation, a program of national science foundation for distinguished young scholars in China.

Liming Zhao, Aline Normoyle, Sanjeev Khanna and Alla Safonova. "Automatic Construction of a Minimum Size Motion Graph" ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, New Orleans, 2009.
Liming Zhao and Alla Safonova. "Achieving Good Connectivity in Motion Graphs." Accepted to Graphical Models Journal 2009 (extended version of the SCA paper).
Liming Zhao and Alla Safonova. "Achieving Good Connectivity in Motion Graphs." ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, Dublin, Ireland, 2008. Conference Award: Best Paper Award.
Matt Huenerfauth, Liming Zhao, Erdan Gu and Jan Allbeck. "Evaluation of American Sign Language Generation by Native ASL Signers." ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, 2008.
Matt Huenerfauth, Liming Zhao, Erdan Gu and Jan Allbeck. "Evaluating American Sign Language Generation through the Participation of Native ASL Signers." Ninth International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Tempe, Arizona, ASSETS-2007. Conference Award: Best Technical Paper Award.
Matt Huenerfauth, Liming Zhao, Erdan Gu and Jan Allbeck. "Design and Evaluation of an American Sign Language Generator." 45th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Workshop on Embodied Language Processing. Prague, Czech Republic. 2007.
Liming Zhao, Ying Liu, Norman Badler. "Applying Empirical Data on Upper Torso Movement to Real-time Collision-free Reach Tasks." SAE Digital Human Modeling Conference, 2005.

Reviewer for:
Computer Animation and Social Agents (2009)
ACM Transactions on Graphics Journal (2007, 2008)
Graphical Models Journal (2006, 2007)
Presence: Journal of Teleoperations and Virtual Environments (2006)
ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (2005)
Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics (2004)
Student Member of ACM SIGGRAPH

Operating system: Windows, Unix, Linux.
Programming language: Python, C, C++, Java, OpenGL, CG, Matlab and Assembly.
Software development platform/toolkit: Qt, MFC, Maya, Gamebryo and ProScena.

Teaching assistant for Computer Animation (Fall 2005, Fall 2006, Fall 2007). Designed and graded course projects, and gave lectures on facial animation.
Teaching assistant for Introduction to Computer Science with Java (Fall 2004 and Spring 2005). Designed and instructed lab sessions and review sessions. Strong English proficiency.

Dr. Norman Badler <badler@seas.upenn.edu>
Professor, Computer & Information Science Dept. University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Alla Safonova <alla@cis.upenn.edu>
Assistant Professor, Computer & Information Science Dept. University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Stephen Lane <shlane@cis.upenn.edu>
Adjunct Associate Professor, Computer & Information Science Dept. University of Pennsylvania.
Amy Calhoun <cal1@seas.upenn.edu>
Associate Director of Digital Media Design, University of Pennsylvania