Confessions of a researchaholic

During my PhD study, I observed how my adviser continued to code and experiment for his own projects, even after being very well established – tenured Stanford professor, computer graphics achievement award, etc.

After graduation I spent a decade in the industry as an engineer and researcher. For companies I worked for (NVIDIA and Microsoft), not coding feels worse than not talking (unless you are a manager).
Even when I consult (e.g. Lytro), I still opt to implement, even if the code cannot be shared due to IP reasons.

Thus, implementation has become an integral part of my workflow.
I found it the best way to (really) learn new topics, and more importantly a highly enjoyable process; I lose some mental balance without coding for more than a few days.

Maybe I am not smart enough, but I never understand why some CS people can get by without implementation.

For my past projects I either code with experienced collaborators, or leave it to the students for topics that I am already familiar with.
I have never code with a junior student in the same project, but I am starting that for a black-magic-like project.
I think this could be fun and mutually beneficial, and will report the experience later.

https://www.facebook.com/liyiwei/posts/10207898861689892

[This post is for answering press inquiries about our SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 paper titled “autocomplete hand-drawn animations”.]

On August 2014, Koji Yatani (at the University of Tokyo) asked me (on Facebook!) to recommend students for a MSR Asia internship under Takaaki Shiratori with topics in animation and sketch UI. I recommended my HKU PhD student Jun Xing, who just got a paper in SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 titled “autocomplete painting repetitions”.
(Both Koji and I were with MSR. That is how we got to know each other even though we have no overlap.)

Our initial goal was to help users create animated emoji in instant messaging. I wanted to make sure the project is significant enough (e.g. for SIGGRAPH) while leveraging our collective expertise as much as possible. Thus, I proposed to extend the aforementioned SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 paper, which can autocomplete only single-frame drawings, for multi-frame animations. The main goal for both projects is to help ordinary users draw as easily and effectively as possible.
(My dad is an artist, but I have yet to learn how to draw. So as any decent computer scientist would do, I ask algorithms for help.)

Jun designed most of the user interface and algorithms, and implemented the entire system. He is definitely one of the best students I have worked with.

We plan to ship prototypes of the system to gather user opinions for further research and improvements, starting with mobile apps followed by desktop versions.

PS:
Contrary to what some press reported, this is NOT a Microsoft technology or product (at least not at this moment of writing). None of the authors were with Microsoft during the key stages of the project development. In particular, the core ideas were conceived before the start of the internship, and Jun had to come back to HKU to finish the project after Takaaki left Microsoft about 1 month before the paper deadline.

People who are the most important in my life are those who make me better.

I would like to thank Chia-Kai Liang, my collaborator in a light field camera design project.

• The best kind of research projects has both academic and industry values. He brought me into this very interesting problem, for which our solution turns into a SIGGRAPH paper and part of a next generation Lytro camera.

• Initially I thought the project is too engineering-oriented for a good research paper. He corrected my blind spot and kept us moving on.
  (I am still learning to walk the very thin line between optimism and pessimism for research.)

• The project involved heavy workloads in data capture and prototype engineering. He participated and coordinated all these with the product teams and paper co-authors.

• He wrote the code and paper with me, more closely and more effectively than my previous (excellent) collaborators.

• I learned several technicalities thanks to him, such as designing light field cameras, using cmake without blowing off our legs, putting python (programming language) to good use, automating speech synthesis for video dubbing, etc.

• He made sure I started preparing our SIGGRAPH talk before inside the convention center.

I look forward to further collaboration with Chia-Kai in innovating computational photography.

I have heard enough saying that SIGGRAPH Asia simply accepts papers rejected by SIGGRAPH, and thus is of lower quality.

This is not my business and in any case I do not care an iota what others think. But any scientifically questionable statement deserves to be rebuked.

Both SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia have similar acceptance rates, and are hold at the same review standard in my personal experiences (as authors, reviewers, and committee members).
If you have ever reviewed a SIGGRAPH Asia submission you probably have received instructions from the paper chairs about holding the same quality bar as SIGGRAPH.

In my personal record (up until SIGGRAPH 2015), I have 4 papers rejected by SIGGRAPH Asia and accepted by the next SIGGRAPH, and 4 the other way around. So it is about the same.

The real difference lies not in the quality bar but the (geographic) venue.
As a presenter I do prefer SIGGRAPH due to the usually larger audience.
But I also know others who prefer SIGGRAPH Asia due to visa and travel issues.