Kevin Dale

Graphics and Vision Group
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University

dale {at} eecs.harvard.edu

About | Research | Development | Teaching | Coursework

About

I am a graduate student in computer science at Harvard under Professor Hanspeter Pfister. My research interests are in computer graphics, particularly data-driven techniques, computational photography, and graphics hardware. I completed my Master's at the University of Virginia under David Luebke and received my B.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina. I interned at HP Labs during the summer of 2006 and at IBM from 2003-2004.

Research

Graphics Hardware for Radio Astronomy. The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a next-generation radio telescope being built in the Australian outback to study the early universe, sun, and sky transients. It will be a software telescope, dependent on real-time high performance computing on site. Early GPU trials have demonstrated an average speedup of 10x over CPU implementations, and our group is currently expanding the test pipeline across a GPU cluster.

  • K. Dale, D. Mitchell, R. Wayth, S. Ord, L. Greenhill, D. Luebke, and H. Pfister. A Graphics Hardware-Accelerated Real-Time Processing Pipeline for Radio Astronomy. AstroGPU 2007. (slides)

    • Multidimensional Adaptive Sampling for Ray Tracing. We've developed a new adaptive sampling strategy for sampling over high dimensional domains, such as those that occur when rendering with effects like depth of field, motion blur, and glossy reflection. Our technique compares favorably to existing adaptive sampling strategies in terms of artifacts and overall image quality for same-time comparisons.

  • T. Hachisuka, W. Jaroz, R. P. Weistroffer, K. Dale, G. Humphreys, M. Zwicker, and H. W. Jensen. Multidimensional Adaptive Sampling and Reconstruction for Ray Tracing. ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), 2008. To appear.

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    Adaptive 3D Scanning. Here, we're investigating the use of adaptive techniques for rangefinder-based 3D scanning systems. Our prototype device, composed of a laser rangefinder and a pair of galvanometer-mounted mirrors, is part of a closed-loop system that focuses scanning efforts on areas of low spatial and temporal coherence in its field of view.

  • K. Dale, E. Cheslak-Postava, G. Humphreys, and D. P. Luebke. Scanning and Reconstruction for Dynamic Surfaces. Technical Report CS-2006-25, Department of Computer Science, UVA.

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    Small-Scale Reconfigurability (SSR) in Graphics Processors. In this work, we show that SSR can be used effectively in programmable graphics architectures to allow double-precision computation without affecting the performance of single-precision calculations, and to increase fragment shader performance with a minimal impact on chip area.

  • K. Dale, J. W. Sheaffer, V. Vijay Kumar, D. P. Luebke, G. Humphreys, and K. Skadron. Small-Scale Reconfigurability for Improved Performance and Double Precision in Graphics Hardware, International Journal of Electronics, 94(5), May 2007.

  • K. Dale, J. W. Sheaffer, V. Vijay Kumar, D. P. Luebke, G. Humphreys, and K. Skadron. Applications of Small-Scale Reconfigurability to Graphics Processors. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Applied Reconfigurable Computing (ARC), March 2006.

    • Development

    Abbot: A Java GUI Test Framework. Abbot is a framework for programmatically driving Java UI components; coupled with Costello, which provides scripting capabilities to Abbot, the framework is well-suited for building unit and functional tests for GUI-based Java applications. As an intern at IBM, I extended Abbot to support SWT and worked on integrating Abbot into the Eclipse platform.

    Teaching

  • Computer Organization, Fall 2005, Teaching Assistant. University of Virginia.

    • Selected Coursework

    Computer Vision. Over the course of CS651 (Computer Vision), I've implemented a variety of computer vision algorithms, including edge and corner detection, face detection, optical flow, and stereo. For our final project, we tested the robustness of Helmholtz stereopsis for highly specular and anisotropic materials.

    Image Synthesis. In CS647 (Image Synthesis), I implemented a number of techniques for the Monte Carlo renderer pbrt, including:

    Automata Explorer. I implemented FAVis, a 3D visualization tool for finite automata, for the course project for CS660 (Theory). It allows users to view and manipulate 3D models of deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata. It also parses regular expressions into equivalent NFA's, converts NFA's to simplified DFA's, and simulates DFA's on input strings. FAVis uses a force-directed approach for graph layout.

    Puzzle Solver. For the course project in CS661 (Algorithms), we implemented a puzzle solver capable of efficiently solving arbitrary rectilinear puzzles. The solver employs a number of heuristics to reduce the search space, and the algorithm proceeds in a breadth-first manner to explore all possible solutions. Additionally, the framework is extensible to non-rectilinear and 3D puzzles.

    Wildlife Center Patient Database. The Piedmont Wildlife Center is a local nonprofit organization that supports native wildlife through rehabilitation, education, and research. The center cares for sick, injured and orphaned wildlife, with the intent of returning them to their original habitat. In COMP 145 at UNC, our project team implemented an online patient database for tracking individual patients' treatment and generating aggregate statistics for year-end reports.