Research in Serious Games. We are developing new genre of science-centric serious games, including games that lead to scientific discoveries in biochemistry with implications towards curing diseases, discovering vaccines, and developing novel biofuels.

Synthesis of Natural Control Mechanisms. We are investigating automatic methods for determining the fundamental control mechanisms that give rise to a wide variety of animal locomotion.  We are investigating human locomotion control as well as natural controllers for quadrupeds and birds in flight.

Dynamics and Control Reduction.  We are investigating control and model reduction techniques that will enable us to automatically reduce the complexity of dynamic simulators. The same techniques should also allow for custom-designed  dynamics approximations tailored for specific dynamic control problems.

Reusable Motion Libraries. Our goal is to give non-skilled computer users the ability to use computer animation as an expressive medium. The fundamental paradigm behind our approach involves the creation of motion libraries which can be easily mapped onto different characters, or modified to fit the needs of a specific animation. We model the motion as an optimal dynamic process which allows us to preserve dynamic properties of the animation during editing. This formulation also enables us to intuitively edit high-level motion concepts such as the time and placement of footprints, length and mass of various extremities or joint arrangement.

Control of Complex Dynamics. We are developing methods to control complex dynamic behavior.  We are working on control techniques for natural phenomena such as smoke, water and cloth, as well as for complex actuated dynamics of animals such as humans, birds, and various quadrupeds.

High-fidelity Digital Actors. This research aims at creating synthetic humans that look and move realistically. We are developing data driven methods to capture and reuse high-fidelity detailed dynamic motion of human skin.

Modeling Dynamic Deformation of Flexible Objects. We are developing models for interactive manipulation of flexible articulated body dynamics.  The emphasis of this projects are on realtime performance, dynamic character interaction, and effective rigging of character dynamics.

Novel Interfaces for Computer Animation. With the emergence of real-time motion capture systems we can use our whole body as a natural interface for describing motion.  We are also exploring traditional drawings as an intuitive interface for rapid prototyping of computer animations.