News Release

NSF funds UC San Diego computer science graduate student developing view synthesis techniques

Alexander Trevithick, a UC San Diego computer science graduate student affiliated with the UC San Diego Center for Visual Computing, has been awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Student Research Fellowship.

Alex Trevithick is advised by Professor Ravi Ramamoorthi in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Ramamoorthi also Directs the UC San Diego Center for Visual Computing.

Trevithick's research is focused on developing techniques for synthesizing novel views of scenes from a single input view. Combining the cutting-edge method Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis (NeRF) with a learned discrete representation of the 3D world, his proposed method will be able to reason about the color and geometry of unseen regions while preserving global and multiview consistency. The project will have many important downstream applications in areas such as robotic locomotion and artificial / virtual reality.
 

Image from the seminal Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis (NeRF) paper, on which UC San Diego computer science professor Ravi Ramamoorthi is an author.

What excites Trevithick most about the project is its inherent 'magic': “that we can take a single input view and envision what the rest of the world looks like, far away from the input camera, yet consistent with this input, is a truly magical ability,” said Trevithick. He believes that such tasks embody true intelligence, and he is excited to advance visual intelligence in such a challenging and exciting setting.

The NSF Graduate Student Research Fellowship recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions.

Media Contacts

Daniel Kane
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-534-3262
dbkane@ucsd.edu