Homework 0 - System Orientation

September 8th, 2002

For this assignment, I was to create this webpage (ta-da!), write an article summary, describe a research project, and create a notebook.

Article summary

Summary of All Science is Computer Science:

The author, George Johnson, succinctly illustrates how many fields of science, in particular, biology and physics, are becoming computer science. Basically all fields of science are shifting towards heavy usage of computational simulations of phenomena. Physicists use very fast computers to process enormous amounts of particle accelerator data, genetecists use (some of) the fastest civilian super computers in the world to sort out the human genome. These two fields require incredible amounts of computer power to analyze data, and they are not alone. In general, all scientists are turning towards the computer to simulate and analyze experiments in their field.

Computational Research Project at FSU

Photo courtesy of RenderPark.

I am doing my thesis on simulating the realistic illumination process called global illumination. In particular I wish to study, apply, and contribute to the photon mapping algorithm developed by Henrik Jensen while at Stanford University.