Kelvin Sung, Professor

Dr. Kelvin Sung received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992. His background is in computer graphics, hardware and machine architecture. He came to UWB from Alias|Wavefront (now part of Autodesk) in Toronto where he played a key role in designing and implementing the Maya Renderer, an Academy Award winning image generation system. Before joining Alias|Wavefront, Kelvin was an Assistant Professor with the School of Computing, National University of Singapore. Kelvin’s research interests are in studying the role of technology in supporting human communication. Kelvin’s recent work focuses on the intersection of videogame mechanics, real-world problems, and mobile technologies. Kelvin teaches both undergraduate and graduate classes in Computer Graphics, and Video Game Development.

Research

Serious games is the study of how to design and build applications to take advantage of the engaging nature of videogames to accomplish real world objectives, objectives that are beyond the traditional “for fun” entertainment purpose. Working with the UWB Office of Admissions and the Center for Serious Play, Kelvin and his students have built a series of games to assist potential visitors to tour UWB campus and to assist new students navigate their way on their first day on campus. Current efforts in this area include: the tools required for the automation of building serious games, software development process for designing/building serious games.

Ultra reality is the study of how to reconstruct reality remotely based on samples of the real world. In very limited ways, we can already achieve this goal, e.g., we can view videos from a web-cam and observe reality remotely. The objective of our study is to generalize this paradigm by reconstructing the entire 3D world. For example, imagine a webpage showing you a webcam view of a classroom. Now imagine from home you can manipulate and move the webcam to any new positions around the entire classroom with any new orientations and observing what is happening in the classroom right at that moment, life, in real time. Of course, our study is how to accomplish these manipulations without moving any actual cameras.

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL

  • Ph.D. Computer Science

Contact

Location:
UW1-260O

Phone:
425-352-3746

Email:
ksung@uw.edu

Website

Courses Taught

  • CSS 106: Computer Animation
  • CSS 290: Mobile Computing
  • CSS 305: Interdisciplinary Information Technology
  • CSS 341: Fundamentals of Programming Theory and Applications
  • CSS 385: Introduction to Game Development
  • CSS 430: Operating Systems
  • CSS 443: Advanced Programming Methodologies
  • CSS 450: Introduction to Computer Graphics
  • CSS 451: 3D Computer Graphics
  • CSS 552: Topics in Rendering