Date: Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Time: 5.15 pm
Venue: Seminar Room 1002
Approximate duration: 1 hour
Over the last decade, computer-assisted animation has become a technology in widespread use thanks to its popularity in film-making, advertising and video games. But, apart from the entertainment industry, computer-assisted animation is starting to be used in other sectors, like medicine, production processes design or architecture. In this talk we will review the impact of animation on all these applications, showing the latest results. Also we will explain in general terms what there is behind computer-assisted animation, how informatics is applied to achieve visual effects like deformations, collisions and fluids, and we will demonstrate what research is being done in Madrid in this field.
Miguel Ángel Otaduy is associate professor at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, where he is a member of the Higher Technical School of Computing's Virtual Reality and Modelling Group. He received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina in 2004, working on physical simulation and haptic interaction, and was researcher at the ETH Zurich graphics group from 2005 to 2008, working on computer-assisted animation and medical applications of simulation. He has been with the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos since February 2008, where he conducts his research and teaches for the Master's Course in Graphical Computing, Games and Virtual Reality. Miguel Ángel Otaduy has published and given conferences at major international congresses on graphical computing and animation, like ACM SIGGRAPH, Eurographics or the Symposium on Computer Animation.
For more information, visit http://www.gmrv.es/~motaduy
Friday, 23 January, 1 pm
H-1002 (Building I)
In recent years, universities have changed their policy towards cooperation. Once mere donors, they have now become cooperation agents responsible for the higher impact technical projects that are being implemented in developing countries. In this talk the UPM's Director of Cooperation will explain what opportunities there are for students in this field, and the many scholarships available for final-year projects on development cooperation. It will be attended by students and professors from the Facultad de Informática that are active members of the Facultad de Informática's TEDECO group. They will share their experiences.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009, 12 am
H-1002 (Building I)
An informative talk on the activities carried out by TEDECO over the last year is to be held in Seminar Room 1002 on 14 January 2009 at 12 am. We will discuss topics for final-year projects and computer systems related to the TICAMEN cooperation project with the University of Ngozi (Burundi), including the possibility of teaching and/or technical assignments at the university.
Tuesday, 21 October, 12 am
H-1002 (Building I)
(the talk will be given in Spanish)
Advances in information technology coupled with powerful market forces are transforming just about all aspects of business and society. We can increasingly leverage the Internet and related open standards to look at a whole organization - an enterprise, an industry eco-system or an economy - as a holistic, integrated system, linking together processes, information and people. We can now apply technology and engineering disciplines to significantly improve productivity and quality in services-based industries like health care, finance, travel and transportation, much as we have done in design and manufacturing of automobiles, computers and consumer electronics in the last decades.
This talk will explore some of the huge challenges that we face in order to realize the potential benefits of such business and societal transformations, including the ability to effectively design and use highly complex, human oriented, market-facing systems and applications. We will also discuss the critical role of universities in conducting the necessary research and training the talent needed for these new technology-based services jobs.
Date: 16 October 2008
Time: 5.15 pm to 7.15 pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre A-3203
Javier Romañach graduated in computing from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and worked as a human-computer interface specialist at several national and European research centres, including CERN, ESA, Telefónica I+D. He collaborates with several NGOs (ASPAYM, FAMMA, COCEMCE...) and works as a consultant for several institutions like Fundación ONCE, IMSERSO, ONCE... He is an expert in the independent living philosophy applied to Design for All, technology and bioethics. He gives conferences, courses and seminars for different institutions on the Design for All philosophy, bioethics and human rights. Javier Romañach is a member of the Independent Living Forum. The Independent Living Forum is a forum of thought, a virtual community set up at Madrid in 2001. His talk will discuss a new viewpoint regarding people with some sort of functional diversity, who are permanently discriminated against without society or even the people with functional diversity realizing. It is time these people were given an equal say and claimed their rights so that now dependent people can live independent lives.
