Biography

I’m a first year grad student in the CS department working towards a masters degree.

Before coming to Madison I received my Bachelors degree in computer engineering from MSOE and worked for about three years after that. Highlights of my career include working on embedded systems with PIC microprocessors, doing data analysis and later quantitative trading for a hedge fund, and controlling printer finishing equipment at Quad/Tech.

After all of that, I decided that I wanted to work in the computer animation industry and so I applied to Madison to focus on computer graphic for a few years before diving in.  I’m interested in pretty much anything that has to do with computer animations including modeling, rendering, and animating.

I’m interested in the vis class because there is an awful lot of information to visualize when dealing with all aspects of computer animation.  A big part of the animation industry is now bringing down costs and making production processes quicker.  Better methods of visualization could be key to this task.

I’m also interested in vis from an educational stand point.  I good visualization can mean the difference between leaning a complicated subject or being completely overwhelmed by it.  I’m interested in any methods of making difficult subjects such as transient analysis of linear circuits easier to understand through good visuals.

From that description, I would say that I fall between vis science and domain science.  As far as my expectations for the course go, I would like to see some of the interested ideas I’ve had for visualizing circuits and math problems come to light as small projects.  I’d also like to get an idea of what “works” in terms of visualizing different types of data.

My skill sets pretty much include C++/C and Java for programming languages and a decent ability to to work spacially.  I’ve done some work with web development inclucing php and database work although I don’t consider myself a pro.  Durring my down time I like to play the guitar and drums, draw picturs, watch movies (computer animated) and play video games.

Here’s a picture of me

Unfortunately, I don’t have a personal website that’s worth looking.

• Name: Ye Liu
• Alias: Alex
• Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Direction: Solid State Physics
• Degree: Ph.D. Candidate
• Website (under construction): http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~liuy/
• Focus: Major: Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems(MEMS), especially microfluidics systems and opto-fluidic systems. Using liquid materials to implement optical systems for micro-scale image.
• Interests: Imaging in micro-scales. Design and building opto-fluidic systems for visual data collection in micro-scales. Data analysis and processing for the visual data obtained by actual systems.
• Interest in visualization: I’d consider myself among a “designer” and a “domain scientist”. As my research is interdisciplinary and requires large amount of data and sometimes image, I’d like to learn methods to design my experiments and reports, making them more impressive, efficient, and understandable to others.
• Expectations from this class: Getting basic ideas of information visualization, figuring out more efficient ways to describe and present the result and methodology of my research. Learn some tools and design methodology throughout the class and project.
• Skill set: Have certain skills for programming using C, and some C++. Also familiar with circuit design tool such as Cadance®. Much familiar with physical simulation tool as ANSYS® and Zemax®, which, however, might not be useful in this course.