News & Events
HARVARD Ph.D. DAVID GU JOINS COMPUTER AND SCIENCE INFORMATION AND ENGINEERING FACULTY
October 7, 2003
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- New CISE Assistant Professor David Xianfeng (pronounced Shenfung) Gu is paving new ground in computer graphics technology and applications. A scholar in computer science using new geometries, Gu is in demand to give his presentation, "Computational Geometry," to universities nationwide such as Harvard, M.I.T., Cal Tech, and Stanford. What makes his work unique is his grasp of both sophisticated mathematical concepts and computer science.
Quiet, soft-spoken, yet very focused, it is easy to respect Gu as an intellectual. He makes an effort to moderate descriptions of his research so that those of us less mathematically inclined can grasp key concepts. He describes his Ph.D. advisor with whom he worked, Shing-Tung Yau, as a brilliant scholar who won the most prestigious award in mathematics, the Fields Medal. Gu points out, "That was the award John Nash ("A Beautiful Mind") tried for, but he never got it."
"All geometricians understand what I am doing," Gu reports. "The theory has been known for years, but no one outside of the group I work with can really compute it out yet in direct computer science application. It's very leading edge. Before we started using modern geometry with its new theories, concepts, and tools, computer graphics were limited to Euclidean geometry. Between topological structure and Euclidean geometric structure, we can discover a new geometric structure, the so-called Riemann surface structure, to compute out real surfaces."
What
this means in layman's terms is that a 3-D object can be flattened out into
a plane, which can be mapped precisely to reduce distortion in computer graphics.
With a click of the mouse, Gu demonstrates how a 3-D image of a rabbit can
be changed to a flat, black- and-white checkered rectangle. With another click
of the mouse, that flat checkerboard turns into a 3-D checkerboard image of
the rabbit, and because the angles of the squares in the checkerboard are
preserved even though their sizes change, the 3-D image has no distortion.
Gu was eager to join the University of Florida because the CISE department has a very strong graphics and visual group with a lot of collaborators. "This department supports me very much," Gu said, "And I enjoy the natural environment of Gainesville as well." Another plus in being here for Gu is the proximity to Shands, since a strong component of his research deals with developing MRI images to better analyze human organs.
Gu
is using mathematical theory to reconstruct 3-D images from traditional MRI's.
This technology will allow for a much more precise mapping, and reading, to
diagnose MRI's. On his laptop computer, Gu demonstrates how he can change
an MRI of a human brain into a 3-D figure. From there, Gu turns the brain
image into a perfectly round sphere. As a sphere, versus as a flat image or
one with ridges and irregular surface shapes, people can define a GPS for
the brain. Changes between two MRI's of the same brain can therefore be mathematically
compared, which is much more precise than visually looking for variations
in the original MRI picture-images.
Prior to joining CISE, Gu had his own start-up company developing co-browsing on the web. He sold the company right before the crash and adds, "Intellectually, industry was very boring. You take one idea and then spend years and years marketing that one product idea." His preference is for academia where he can conduct research, and now that computer development has reached efficient potential as a tool (power and software are now mature), Gu enjoys being able to tackle increasingly difficult problems that require more sophisticated theoretical and conceptual thinking.
His favorite part of teaching is sharing that knowledge with gifted CISE students. "The students are young, curious, and quick to accept new concepts so they can master the material fairly quickly. I find them to be very enthusiastic, very curious, and most importantly for graphics, very creative," Gu said.
It is easy to respect Gu personally as well as intellectually. Although he is introverted, he's friendly and embodies qualities of Chinese culture that are fascinating. Gu explains that his name means "high mountain" in Chinese, and it belongs within a thousand-year generational family poem, expressing "If you want to see the most beautiful thing, go to the highest mountain." His wife is completing her Ph.D. at Yale, while his parents remain in China and look forward to his summer visits home whenever he can make it.
While Gu admits that since he just started teaching here fall semester, he hasn't had much time for personal hobbies, he plans to resume playing saxophone in the near future. At Harvard, he played in a band that did open air public performances. Gu loves American jazz, which he finds revolutionary compared to traditional Chinese musical models.
Admiration for things revolutionary in nature can be applied to his work
in computer graphics, and CISE is proud to have him as a new faculty member.
Writer: Terri Bailey, 352-373-1041, TBailey567@aol.com
Source: David (Xianfeng) Gu, 352-392-1476, gu@cise.ufl.edu
