Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS)
Projects Day

August 16, 2002

IPAM Building (Across from Moore Hall)
Main Lecture Room: Rm 1200

We would like to announce Projects Day at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM). This event will take place on Friday, August 16, 2002 from 8:45 to 4:15pm at IPAM on the UCLA campus. Projects Day is part of our Research in Industrial Projects for Students (“RIPS”) program, which is in its second year. RIPS is a program that teams top level undergraduate students selected from an international pool with faculty mentors and Industry sponsored projects. We are very fortunate this year to have six companies participating as sponsors, Arete, HRL, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Protein Pathways and Synopsys. Projects Day will feature presentations from the student teams alternating with innovative and exciting talks by distinguished scientists from academia and industry. This year we are very pleased to have three distinguished scientists as our guest speakers. They are:

• Rob Cook, Pixar Animation Studios
• Ann R. Karagozian, UCLA Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department
• Martin Lo, Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

Projects Day Schedule

Speaker Bios

Rob Cook

Rob has a B.S. in Physics from Duke University and an M.S. in Computer Graphics from Cornell University. At Cornell, he developed a physically based model of light-surface interaction that could realistically simulate color and shading; prior to this work, computer-generated images had been limited to a distinctly plastic look. In 1981, he joined Lucasfilm / Pixar where he extended this work and developed the first programmable shader for simulating complex surface appearances.  He was the first to apply Monte Carlo techniques to rendering, solving several of the thorniest long-standing problems in computer graphics: antialiasing point sampling and ray-tracing, simulating camera effects such as motion blur and depth of field, and rendering soft shadows, glossy reflections and translucency. Motion blur and depth of field proved particularly important in the special effects industry, because they allow computer-generated imagery to match the live-action footage with which they are combined. In 1987, Cook received the ACM Siggraph Achievement Award in recognition of these contributions.  Rob was the co-architect and primary author of Pixar's RenderMan software, which is acknowledged as the industry standard for photo-realistic rendering. Of the last 35 films nominated for Visual Effects Oscars, 33 have used RenderMan. In 2001 he received the only Oscar ever given for software. He is currently the Vice President of Software Engineering at Pixar Animation Studios.

Ann R. Karagozian

Professor Karagozian has been a faculty member in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UCLA since 1982, having received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in that year. Her research interests lie in the fluid mechanics of combustion systems, with current emphasis on numerical simulation and experimental interrogation of acoustically driven reacting flows and high speed combustion systems.  Professor Karagozian regularly teaches a number of courses in the MAE Department and was the 1987 recipient of the TRW-UCLA Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has served as an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power (1996-98). She is also a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics  Professor Karagozian is currently an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal and has been a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and of the NASA Aero-Space Technology Advisory Committee. In 2001 she chaired a panel for the Air Force SAB examining Sensor Technologies for Deeply Buried Targets, and she also was co-organizer of an international meeting on the Modeling, Manipulation, and Control of Transverse Jets in Udine, Italy, sponsored by CISM (Centre International des Sciences Mecaniques). She is currently on the Executive Committee for the Western States Section of the Combustion Institute and has been on that for the American Physical Society/Division of Fluid Dynamics. She is an alumna of the Defense Science Study Group, sponsored by DARPA and the Institute for Defense Analyses, and served on the NASA Federal Lab Review Task Force. She has also served on technical panels for the National Academy of Science's Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, the Naval Studies Board, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation.

Martin W. Lo

Dr. Martin W. Lo is a member of the Navigation and Mission Design Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Lo received his PhD from Cornell University (1980) and his BS from the California Institute of Technology in mathematics. As Mission Design Manager, he led the development of the trajectory for the Genesis Mission which launched on August 8, 2001 and is now collecting Solar Wind samples in orbit about L1. He is currently supporting the mission design and technology development of the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission. Professor Lo was nominated for the Discover Magazine Innovation Award in the field of Aerospace for his work on applying "chaos theory" to the design of trajectories like the one used by Genesis, computed using his LTool which has defined what Lo calls an "InterPlanetary Superhighway": paths through space that depend on balanced-gravity points between planets. This helps spacecraft fly though the solar system on very little fuel.  He is the organizer of the Lagrange Group, an interdisciplinary and international group of researchers and engineers from universities, NASA centers, and industry whose focus is on the development of nonlinear astrodynamics techniques with applications to space missions and dynamical astronomy. At the request of the NASA Exploration Team, he demonstrated that formation flight in halo orbits is practical for the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission from the trajectory and mission design point of view.  He also conceived of a novel approach for human servicing of libration missions such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder at a Gateway Module in halo orbit about the Lunar L1. This provides a cost effective and efficient approach for human servicing. The spacecraft requiring service may be moved between the Earth libration orbits and the Lunar Gateway module via ultra low energy trajectories in the InterPlanetary Superhighway. This is a vast system of tunnels and passageways in space, discovered by Lo, which connects the whole Solar System and is generated by the Lagrange Points of all of the planets and moons. Not only does the InterPlanetary Superhighway provide low energy orbits for space missions, it is also traveled by comets and asteroids throughout the Solar System. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and the asteroid which killed the dinosaurs both traveled in impact orbits which are similar to the Genesis orbit. Thus the InterPlanetary Superhighway is crucial to the development of life on Earth. Lo believes that the InterPlanetary Superhighway may play a key role in our understanding of low-thrust trajectory design for spacecraft using advanced electric or nuclear propulsion.