01
Forward rendering
Synthesizing photorealistic images of 3D digital scenes using numerical (e.g., Monte Carlo) and/or data-driven (i.e., neural) methods.
Research in 3D graphics & vision.
A non-exclusive list of directions my group has worked on recently — spanning physics-based light transport, differentiable and inverse rendering, and grid-free Monte Carlo PDE solvers.
Research directions
04 / non-exclusive02
Differentiable rendering
Estimating derivatives of forward-rendering results with respect to arbitrary scene parameters (e.g., camera pose, object geometry, and illumination conditions).
03
Inverse rendering
Inferring or optimizing scene parameters (in physics-based or neural representations) given images (e.g., photographs or video clips) of the scene.
04
Monte Carlo PDE solving
Without domain discretization, estimating solutions and their derivatives to certain partial differential equations (e.g., Laplace and Poisson equations) using Monte Carlo methods like walk on spheres (WoS) and walk on stars (WoSt).
Current students
05 / advising- Yu-Chen Wang
- PhD, CS
- Zhiqian Zhou
- PhD, CS
- Peiyu Xu
- PhD, CS
- Hongtu Xu
- PhD, CS
- Jingwang Ling
- PhD, CS
Alumni
07 / graduated- 2025
- Kai Yan — PhD, CS · next: Tencent
- 2025
- Guangyan Cai — PhD, CS · next: SceniX
- 2025
- Marco (Zhanhang) Liang — PhD, CS
- 2025
- Zihan Yu — PhD, CS · next: Meta Reality Labs Research
- 2022
- Cheng Zhang — PhD, CS, Facebook Fellow · next: Meta Reality Labs Research
- 2021
- Zahra Montazeri — PhD, CS · next: University of Manchester
- 2021
- Yu Guo — PhD, CS · next: Tencent America
Funding
with gratitude- National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Meta Reality Labs
- Nvidia
- Adobe