Pradeep Sen Associate Professor UCSB Advanced Graphics Lab Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9560 psen at ece ucsb edu

Ph.D., Stanford University, 2006 M.S., Stanford University, 1998 B.S., Purdue University, 1996 [FULL CV]

office: Harold Frank Hall 5117

telephone: 805-893-4265

fax: 805-893-3262

email: psen at ece ucsb edu

availability: my calendar is here

Welcome to my homepage! I am the founder and director of the UCSB Advanced Graphics Lab (AGL) which is dedicated to research in computer graphics, imaging, visualization, and computer vision. I graduated with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Graphics Lab at Stanford University, where my adviser was Pat Hanrahan.

Attention potential graduate students/post-docs: I am looking for new graduate students and post-docs to start working with me immediately at UC Santa Barbara. The ECE department at UCSB is one of the best in the nation, ranked #4 by the National Research Council and #16 by the US News and World Report (#9 among public universities). The department has 11 National Academy faculty, 25 IEEE Fellows, and one Nobel Prize winner, and many of our Ph.D. graduates go on to take faculty positions at universities in the top 30. In addition, UC Santa Barbara is ranked #6 out of the world's top 100 universities in Engineering/Technology in the latest Shanghai Rankings. Finally, the Santa Barbara area is a great place to live, with walking access from our department to beautiful beaches, lovely natural scenery, and a short drive to Los Angeles, which has the largest concentration of digital media industry in the United States.

Successful graduate applicants will typically have one or more first-author journal publications as well as a strong personal desire and commitment to become future leaders in our field, either in academia or industry. If you are interested in my areas of research, please look through my publications and email me if you want to be considered for a graduate student or post-doc position.

Mini Biography

Pradeep Sen is an Associate Professor in the Advanced Graphics Lab in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He attended Purdue University from 1992 - 1996, where he graduated with a B.S. in Computer and Electrical Engineering. He then attended Stanford University where he received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering in the area of electron-beam lithography. He then joined the Stanford Graphics Lab in the Fall of 2000 where he did research on real-time rendering and computational photography. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in June 2006, advised by Dr. Pat Hanrahan. His interests in computer graphics include algorithms for image synthesis, computational image processing, and computational photography, and he is an author of almost 30 technical publications. Dr. Sen has been awarded more than $1.7 million in research funding, including an NSF CAREER award in 2009.

Selected Awards/Honors

• Videogame development program at UNM ranked in the top 10 undergraduate programs by the Princeton Review (2012)
• Videogame development program at UNM ranked in the top 50 programs by the Princeton Review and GamePro Magazine (2010)
• National Science Foundation CAREER award (2009)
• UNM Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering Lawton-Ellis Award (2009)
• NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship (2004)
• SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Graphics Hardware Conference Best Paper award (2004)
• SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Graphics Hardware Conference Best Paper award (2002)

Research Interests

My research interests are in the area of rendering/image synthesis and computational image processing. I study novel rendering algorithms to accelerate global illumination, as well as image-based techniques for capturing light transport. I am also interested in real-time rendering and graphics hardware. On the computational image processing side, I am interested in novel imaging architectures as well as new ways to combine processing and acquisition to capture new kinds of imagery.

Current Students

At UCSB, I have the pleasure of working with great graduate students from some of the top universities around the world:

• Nima Khademi Kalantari -- B.S., M.S., Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran
• Steve Bako -- B.S., University of California, Berkeley

Former Students

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of working with some truly remarkable students. Here is a list of students who have graduated under my supervision:

Dr. Soheil Darabi, Ph.D. August 2012 (currently at Adobe)

Former M.S. Thesis Students:

• Mauricio Gomez, M.S. July 2012 (currently at Disney)
• Lei Xiao, M.S. July 2012 (currently a Ph.D. student at UBC)
• Mark Waligora, M.S. April 2008 (currently at Blizzard Entertainment)

Research Funding

Current grants:

• CAREER: A Framework for Sparse Signal Reconstruction for Computer Graphics, Principal Investigator: P. Sen. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Jun. 1, 2009 - May 31, 2014. Amount: $495,513. [ NSF website ]

• PFI: A Consortium for Fulldome and Immersive Technology Development, Principal Investigator: P. Sen, Co-PI's: E. Angel, D. Beining, A. Filemyr, A. Maji. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Mar. 1, 2010 - Aug. 10, 2012. Amount: $597,220. [ NSF website ]
• MRI: Acquisition of a GPU-Accelerated Parallel Supercomputer for Computational Science and Engineering Research at the University of New Mexico, Principal Investigator: S. Atlas, Co-PI's: H. Guo, P. Sen, J. Simpson, T. Thomas. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Sep. 1, 2010 - Aug. 10, 2012. Amount: $435,077. [ NSF website ]
• An augmented-reality display system for visualization and training (first-year proposal), Principal Investigator: P. Sen. Funded by Sandia National Laboratories. Oct. 1, 2007 - Sep. 30, 2008. Amount: $40,000.
• An augmented-reality display system for visualization and training (second-year extension), Principal Investigator: P. Sen. Funded by Sandia National Laboratories. Oct. 1, 2008 - Sep. 30, 2009. Amount: $40,000.
• Thinking Outside the Dome, Principal Investigator: P. Sen, Co-PI's: E. Angel, J. Kniss. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Aug. 1, 2009 - Oct. 31, 2009. Amount: $20,000. [ NSF website ]

Teaching

Here are some of the courses I have taught at UNM:

Spring 2012: ECE 633 Advanced Image Processing

Fall 2011: ECE/CS 512 Advanced Image Synthesis
Fall 2011: ECE 495 / 595 Advanced Video Game Development

Spring 2011: ECE 516 / CS 532 Computer Vision
Spring 2011: ECE 495 / 595 Advanced Video Game Development

Fall 2010: ECE/CS 412 Introduction to Computer Graphics
Fall 2010: ECE 495 / 595 Advanced Video Game Development

Spring 2010: ECE 516 / CS 532 Computer Vision
Spring 2010: ECE 495 / 595 Advanced Video Game Development

Fall 2009: ECE/CS 412 Introduction to Computer Graphics
Fall 2009: ECE/CS 495/595 Special Topics in Mobile Application and Game Development
Fall 2009: ECE 551 Game Development for Distribution (Independent Study)

Spring 2009: ECE 516 / CS 532 Computer Vision

Fall 2008: ECE/CS 412 Introduction to Computer Graphics
Fall 2008: ECE/CS 512 Advanced Image Synthesis

Spring 2008: ECE 516 / CS 532 Computer Vision

Fall 2007: ECE 537 Foundations of Computing
Fall 2007: ECE/CS 433 Introduction to Computer Graphics

Spring 2007: ECE 595 Real-Time Rendering & Graphics Hardware

ACM SIGGRAPH/Transactions on Graphics Publications

The ACM SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia conferences, along with the associated ACM Transactions on Graphics journal are among the top venues for publishing technical research in computer graphics.

	Robust Patch-Based HDR Reconstruction of Dynamic Scenes Pradeep Sen, Nima Khademi Kalantari, Maziar Yaesoubi, Soheil Darabi, Dan Goldman, and Eli Shechtman ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 31, No. 6, November 2012, (Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2012) [pdf] [lo-res pdf] [bibtex] [paper page]
	Image Melding: Combining Inconsistent Images using Patch-Based Synthesis Soheil Darabi, Eli Shechtman, Connelly Barnes, Dan Goldman, and Pradeep Sen ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 31, No. 4, July 2012, (Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2012) [pdf] [bibtex] [paper page]
	On Filtering the Noise from the Random Parameters in Monte Carlo Rendering Pradeep Sen and Soheil Darabi ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 31, No. 3, May 2012,(presented at ACM SIGGRAPH 2012) [pdf] [lo-res pdf] [bibtex] [video] [paper page]
	A Versatile HDR Video Production System Michael D. Tocci, Chris Kiser, Nora Tocci, Pradeep Sen ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 30, No. 4, July 2011, (Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2011) [pdf] [bibtex] [video] [paper page]
	Dual Photography Pradeep Sen, Billy Chen, Gaurav Garg, Stephen Marschner, Mark Horowitz, Marc Levoy, Hendrik Lensch ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2005, (Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2005) [pdf] [bibtex]
	Shadow Silhouette Maps Pradeep Sen, Mike Cammarano, Pat Hanrahan ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 22, No. 3, July 2003, (Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2003) [pdf] [bibtex]

Selected Journal Publications

	Removing the Noise in Monte Carlo Rendering with General Image Denoising Algorithms Nima Khademi Kalantari and Pradeep Sen Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 32, No. 2, May 2013, (Proceedings of Eurographics 2013) [pre-print] [bibtex] [paper page]
	Fast Generation of Approximate Blue Noise Point Sets Nima Khademi Kalantari and Pradeep Sen Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 31, No. 4, June 2012, (Proceedings of the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR) 2012) [EG link] [bibtex]
	Compressive Rendering of Multidimensional Scenes Pradeep Sen, Soheil Darabi, Lei Xiao to appear in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, "Video Processing and Computational Video," Eds: D. Cremers, M. Magnor, M. Oswald, L. Zelnik-Manor. Springer. [pdf] [bibtex]
	Efficient Computation of Blue Noise Point Sets through Importance Sampling Nima Khademi Kalantari and Pradeep Sen Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 30, No. 4, June 2011, (Proceedings of the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR) 2011) [pdf] [bibtex]
	Compressive Rendering: A Rendering Application of Compressed Sensing Pradeep Sen and Soheil Darabi IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 17, No. 4, April 2011, [pdf] [bibtex]
	Compressive Estimation for Signal Integration in Rendering Pradeep Sen and Soheil Darabi Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 29, No. 4, June 2010, (Proceedings of the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR) 2010) [pdf] [bibtex] [video]
	Compressive Dual Photography Pradeep Sen and Soheil Darabi Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 28, No. 2, March 2009, (Proceedings of Eurographics 2009) [pdf] [bibtex]
	iStar: A Raster Representation for Scalable Image and Volume Data Joe Kniss, Warrent Hunt, Kristin Potter, Pradeep Sen IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 13, No. 6, Nov/Dec 2007, (Proceedings of IEEE Vis 2007) [pdf] [bibtex]

Selected Peer-Reviewed Conference Publications

	Compressed Sensing for Aperture Synthesis Imaging Stephan Wenger, Soheil Darabi, Pradeep Sen, Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, and Marcus Magnor Proceedings of the International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), Hong Kong, China, September 2010 [pdf] [bibtex]
	Progress in Rendering and Modeling for Digital Planetariums Marcus Magnor, Pradeep Sen, Joe Kniss, Edward Angel, and Stephan Wenger Proceedings of Eurographics 2010, Area Papers, Norrköping, Sweden, May 2010 [pdf] [bibtex]
	A Novel Framework for Imaging Using Compressed Sensing Pradeep Sen and Soheil Darabi Proceedings of the International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), Cairo, Egypt, November 2009 [pdf] [bibtex]
	Compressive Image Super-resolution Pradeep Sen and Soheil Darabi Proceedings of the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, California, November 2009 [pdf] [bibtex]
	Compressive Cooperative Sensing and Mapping in Mobile Networks Yasamin Mostofi and Pradeep Sen Proceedings of the American Control Conference (ACC), St. Louis, Missouri, June 2009 [pdf] [bibtex]
	Compressed Mapping of Communication Signal Strength Yasamin Mostofi and Pradeep Sen Proceedings of MILCOM, San Diego, California, November 2008 [pdf] [bibtex]
	Accelerating Active Contour Algorithms with the Gradient Diffusion Field Chris Kiser, Chris Musial, Pradeep Sen Proceedings of International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), Tampa, Florida, December 2008 [pdf]
	Video Carving Billy Chen, Pradeep Sen Proceedings of Eurographics 2008, Short Papers, Crete, Greece, April 2008 [pdf]
	2½D Texture Mapping: real-time perceptual surface roughening Sylvia Pont, Pradeep Sen, Pat Hanrahan Proceedings of the 4th Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization, Tubingen, Germany, July 2007 [pdf] [bibtex]
	Silhouette Maps for Improved Texture Magnification Pradeep Sen Proceedings of Eurographics Graphics Hardware, Grenoble, France, August 2004 [pdf] [bibtex] Best paper award
	Efficient Partitioning of Fragment Shaders for Multipass Rendering on Programmable Graphics Hardware Eric Chan, Ren Ng, Pradeep Sen, Kekoa Proudfoot, and Pat Hanrahan Proceedings of Eurographics Graphics Hardware, Saarbrucken, Germany, September 2002 [pdf] [bibtex] Best paper award

Traditional Media Coverage of Research and Educational Program

Here is a list of some of the traditional media coverage of both my research and educational programs.

• USA Today, "USC still tops as video game design plays on more campuses," feature on the top 10 undergraduate programs for videogame design (the UNM program is #9). March 1, 2012. [link]
• UNM Engineering Magazine, "Meeting of the minds," feature on interdisciplinary work. Vol. 7, No. 1, pg. 2 - 5, Winter 2011. [pdf]
• UNM Engineering Magazine, cover featuring videogame artwork for one of our AGL projects. Vol. 7, No. 1, Winter 2011. [pdf]
• UNM Today, "NVIDIA selects UNM computing as CUDA Research Center," story on our selection as one of NVIDIA's CUDA Research Centers. Vol. 46, No. 7, pg. 5, February 21, 2011. [pdf]
• UNM Today, "AGL Named in Game Design Top 50," brief story on our videogame program. Vol. 45, No. 8, pg. 6, March 22, 2010. [pdf]
• New Mexico Business Weekly, "Techies take immersive dome experience to new frontiers," story on our immersive dome research project which is sponsored by the the National Science Foundation. Vol. 17, No. 2, March 12-18, 2010. [pdf]
• UNM Today, "Student-created game available online for Xbox," brief story on our videogame program. Vol. 45, No. 6, pg. 3, January 19, 2010. [pdf]
• KASA Fox 2 News (channel 2), feature on Magnetic Defender, one of the videogames released through the AGL game development program, December 22, 2009. [video]
• Noticias Univision (channel 41), interview for the AGL videogame showcase, December 11, 2009 (in Spanish) [video]
• Albuquerque Journal, "Mixing Work and Play," article on the videogame development program. Vol. 129, No. 345, pp. C1 - C2, December 11, 2009. [pdf]
• UNM Engineering Magazine, "Bright Careers: SOE Researchers receive NSF CAREER awards," feature on NSF CAREER Award. Vol. 6, No. 2, pg. 13, Fall 2009. [pdf]
• KRQE News (channel 13), feature on AGL videogame showcase (with a segment on the robotics competition for ECE 131), December 10, 2009 [video]
• UNM Engineering Magazine, "Transforming Graphics For All," feature on research and game development program. Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 5 - 7, Fall 2009. [pdf]
• UNM Today, "Engineering professor, students work to sell games to Xbox," brief story on our videogame program. Vol. 44, No. 9, pg. 4, April 20, 2009. [pdf]
• KRQE News (channel 13), interview for the game development program. April 17, 2009. [video]
• UNM Daily Lobo, "Lobo game developers get chance to sell work," article on our process of releasing videogames developed as part of our program to the public through XBox LIVE. Vol. 113, No. 129, pp. 1 - 2, March 31, 2009. [pdf]
• UNM Daily Lobo, "Students delve into game development," article on our use of XNA to develop videogames as part of our program. Vol. 113, No. 75, pp. 12 - 13, December 11, 2008. [pdf]
• UNM Daily Lobo, "Students take exams to XBox," article on our videogame development program. Vol. 112, No. 75, pp. 1 - 2, December 6, 2007. [pdf]
• KRQE News (channel 13), feature on the 2007 AGL videogame showcase at UNM. December 6, 2007. [video]
• New Mexico Business Weekly, "Gaming Pool: Schools develop training for booming industry," article on our videogame development program as well as others around the state of New Mexico. Vol. 14, No. 35, pp. 2, 48, November 16 - 22, 2007. [pdf]
• Numb3rs television show, reference to dual photography algorithm to extract information from an image. Episode title: "In Plain Sight," Season 2, Episode 8. Original air date November 18, 2005. [video]
• CPU Computer Power User Magazine, "Lights, Camera, Re-Camera," article on dual photography work. Vol. 5, No. 8, August 2005. [pdf]
• Computerworld.ch Magazine, "Kamera schaut um die Ecke," article on dual photography work (in Swiss German). July 22, 2005. [pdf]

Online Media Coverage of Research and Educational Program

Here is a list of some of the online media coverage of both my research and educational programs.

• HDRLabs News, "New HDR video camera: AMP HDR," article on the new HDR camera presented in our SIGGRAPH 2011 technical paper. June 17, 2011. [link]
• UNM Today, "NVIDIA Selects UNM Computing as a CUDA Research Center," January 26, 2011. [link]
• GlobeNewswire, "3D Imaging Pioneer, 3DIcon Corporation, Adds Dr. Pradeep Sen to Its Technical Advisory Board," June 1, 2011. [link]
• HPC Wire, "NVIDIA Names 20 New CUDA Research and Training Centers," December 23, 2010. [link]
• Vizworld, "NVIDIA Names 20 New CUDA Research Centers," December 22, 2010. [link]
• UNM Today, "Students Create Video Games As Final Project," December 13, 2010. [link]
• UNM School of Engineering Homepage, "Public Invited to Test and Play Video Games Thursday, 12/9/10," December 8, 2010. [link]
• UNM Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering Homepage, "UNM Named an Official NVIDIA CUDA Research Center," November 22, 2010. [link]
• UNM Today, "New Mexico Innovators Join Forces on Fulldome Research," article on our National Science Foundation grant to explore immersive fulldome media. March 12, 2010. [link]
• UNM Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering Homepage, "UNMAdvanced Graphics Lab Named Top 50 Game Design Program," March 1, 2010. [link]
• UNM School of Engineering Homepage, "NSF Funds Prof. Sen's Work on Immersive Dome Environments," March 3, 2010 [link]
• UNM Today, "UNM Student-Created Game Now Available for Download on Xbox," December 22, 2009. [link]
• UNM Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering Homepage, "Microsoft Releases Game Developed in ECE's Advanced Graphics Lab," December 17, 2009. [link]
• UNM Today, "UNM ECE - We've Got Game," December 10, 2009. [link]
• UNM Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering Homepage, "Public Invited to Test Video Games, See Robots Compete Thursday," December 8, 2009. [link]
• UNM Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering Homepage, "Profs, Students Recognized for Patents, Copyrights," April 17, 2009. [link]
• UNM Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering Homepage, "Dr. Pradeep Sen Wins 2009 NSF CAREER Award," March 31, 2009. [link]
• UNM Today, "UNM Engineering Professor, Students Working to Sell Games to Xbox," March 20, 2009. [link]
• UNM Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering Homepage, "Game On! Test Drive New Video Games Thursday," December 9, 2008. [link]
• UNM Live, "A Video Game for a Final Project?," video on our videogame showcase, posted January 10, 2008. [video]
• UNM Live, "UNM Talks Computer Graphics with Assistant Professor Pradeep Sen," podcast interview on videogame development, November 27, 2007. [video]
• UNM Today, "UNM Advanced Graphics Lab Hosts 'GFX Cafe' Every Friday," September 13, 2007. [link]
• Technology Research News, "Camera sees behind objects," article on dual photography work. June 1 - 8, 2005. [link]
• New Scientist, "Card trick holds promise for movie effects," article on dual photography work. June 1, 2005. [link]
• Slashdot, "Seeing Around Corners With Dual Photography," May 5, 2005. [link]

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