Hw1Questionaire

Ashok Basawapatna (basawapa@colorado.edu) Fall Semester 2007

Brief Questionnaire for the Participants of the Course

Doctoral Level Independent Study
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CSCI 7900-903

1. your name: Ashok Basawapatna

2. the intended topic area for your Ph.D.: Telepresence

3. most important reason for you personally to get a PhD
My dream is to have my own research lab in which I control the direction of research. Also, I would like to teach.

4. name three computer scientist which YOU consider most important for the field and what you consider their contribution
4.1. Edwin Catmull- Computer graphics that a quintessential to graphics intensive computer applications
4.2. Morton Heilig- Created and patented the Head Mounted Display and also created an early virtual reality video game in the form of the Sensorama which stimulated 4 out of the 5 senses (sound, touch, sight, smell).
4.3. Yu Suzuki- One of the most immersive worlds in recent history in the form of the Shenmue franchise.

5. name the three most important, professionally relevant books which you have read
5.1. The New Media Reader by Noah Wardrip-Fruin
5.2. Artificial Intelligence: A modern Approach by Stuart Russel and Peter Norvig
5.3. Snow Crash By Neal Stephenson

6. assuming you will collaborate with researchers and explore ideas outside of CS during your PhD studies — which domains are the most likely candidates for this effort
6.1. Social Psychology
6.2. Electrical Engineering
6.3. Rehabilitation therapists

7. briefly characterize your own digital literacy:
7.1. which programming language do you know (mention them in an order of decreasing familiarity)
C++, Java, Matlab, Python, Perl, Mel Scripting, HTML.

7.2. describe the top three projects (problem, programming language used, for what) which you have done in the past
1) Scheduling Visemes and helping to create parts of the procedural animation pipeline for virtual characters in the Institute for Creative Technology's SASO project (C++, Java)
2) Creating a Virtual Tennis Simulation to test various real-time characteristics of Virtual Reality systems (Python)
3) Creating Automated Scripts to facilitate online assignments for an online homework system called Webworks (Perl).

7.3. which are the top three applications that you are familiar with (e.g. Photoshop, Canvas, Dreamweaver, iMovie, ….)?
1) Maya/3d Studio Max, 2) Garage Band, 3) Graphic Converter.

8. List your three favorite topics that you would like to see discussed in this course!
8.1. What are some common characteristics of Fun Ph.D. experience
8.2. What are some common characteristics of Painful Ph.D. experiences
8.3. What methods are there to test if a given thesis idea is too trivial or too ambitious.

Last modified 2 September 2007 at 10:58 pm by Ashok.Basawapatna