Distinguished Professor, Department of Computer Science
Professor Max’s research interests are in the areas of scientific visualization, computer animation, realistic computer graphics rendering, and multi-view stereo reconstruction. In visualization he works on molecular graphics, and volume and flow visualization, particularly on irregular finite element meshes. He has rendered realistic lighting effects in clouds, trees, and water waves, and has produced numerous computer animations, shown at the annual ACM SIGGRAPH conferences, and in OMNIMAX at the Fujitu Pavilions at Expo ’85 in Tsukuba Japan, and Expo ’90 in Osaka Japan. He is a member of the IEEE, and Eurographics, and a Fellow of the ACM. Some of his publications can be found at http://graphics.idav.ucdavis.edu/publications by entering “Max” in the author box, and clicking the appropriate year, and other (mostly older ones) can be found at http://library-ext.llnl.gov by clicking Reports Search and then entering ” Max, N* ” in the Report Author box.
Dawn Sumner
Nelson Max
Jorge Peña
Arne Ekstrom
My research focuses on reconstructing ancient environments on early Earth and Mars and the early evolution of bacteria, including oxygenic photosynthesis. My group studies everything from the environmental setting, geochemistry and morphology of Archean microbialites to the morphology, climate response, and genomics of modern microbial communities growing in ice-covered Antarctic lakes to the stratigraphy and geochemistry of sedimentary rocks on Mars. I am a member of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, helping the rover Curiosity explore ancient environments in Gale Crater on Mars. I regularly share my research and adventures with the public and am dedicated to helping students of all backgrounds prepare for careers in science.
Associate Professor, Department of Communication
Jorge Peña specializes in computer-mediated communication, new media, communication in video games and virtual environments, and content analysis of online communication. He is a member of the editorial board of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication and is currently vice-chair of the Game Studies Division at the National Communication Association. Professor Peña investigates cognition, affect, and behavior in video games and virtual environments. He also studies priming effects in virtual contexts, along with impression formation and group communication in online settings. Professor Peña employs quantitative research methods such as experiments, content analysis and automated linguistic analysis.
The primary mission of Professor Ekstrom’s lab is to better understand the neurophysiological basis of human memory. The lab’s particular focus is on spatial memory and its neural foundations in humans. The lab employs several different recording methodologies to better understand spatial memory, including intracranial EEG, fMRI and scalp EEG. Studies in the lab focus on how low-frequency oscillations code for aspects of spatial and temporal context, how and in what manner the brain constructs cognitive maps, how navigation vs. episodic memory processing are represented in the brain, and how the different recording modalities tie together or provide complementary information about underlying brain processes
Associate Professor of Psychology
Affiliated Faculty Center for Mind and Brain
Speakers
