James Gain

Curriculum Vitae


NAME: James Edward Gain

ADDRESS:    

Computer Science Department
University of Cape Town
Private Bag RONDEBOSCH
7701
Cape Town

TELEPHONE:

[Home]  (021) 6868358
[Work]   (021) 6504058
[Fax]      (021) 6503551 

E-MAIL: jgain[at]cs[dot]uct[dot]ac[dot]za

BORN: Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa, 20 May 1971

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

PRINCIPAL SCHOLARSHIPS

1991 Rhodes Governor's Scholarship (one of four awards for the best Rhodes undergraduates in the Arts and Sciences).

1993 Rhodes Foundation Scholarship (for the most outstanding Rhodes graduate of 1992).

1993-1995 FRD Scholarship for Post-Graduate Study.

1994 Henry Bradlow Scholarship for Science (for the top Rhodes Honour graduate in the Sciences).

1997-2000 British Commonwealth Scholarship.

WORK EXPERIENCE

[Jan. 2010-] Associate Professor in Computer Science, University of Cape Town.

[Oct. 2000-Dec.2009] Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Cape Town.

[Apr.-Jun. 2000] Sony Entertainment (Europe), Great Shelford: presenting a 10-session course on Mathematics for Computer Graphics.

[1997-2000] University of Cambridge, Cambridge: supervision of six final year student projects (four of whom where, in successive years, placed in the top three of their class) and supervision of second and third year undergraduate courses.

[Feb.-Nov. 1996] Rhodes University, Grahamstown: part-time lecturing (1st and 3rd year levels).

[Mar.-Jun. 1996] Grahamstown Technical College, Grahamstown: teaching an introductory computer course.

[May-Dec. 1996] Victoria Girls’ High School, Grahamstown: teaching Computer Studies to a Grade 12 class.


PUBLICATIONS

Journal Publications

1)     Tunbridge, I., Best, R., Gain, J. and Kuttel, M., ÒSimulation of Coarse-Grained Protein-Protein Interactions with Graphics Processing UnitsÓ, Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Vol. 6, No. 11, pp. 3588-3600.

2)     Merry, B., Marais, P. and Gain, J., ÒSimplifying Character Skins with Analytic Error MetricsÓ, Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2010, pp. 13-24.

3)     Cross, S., Kuttel, M., Stone, J. and Gain, J., ÒVisualisation of Cyclic and Multi-branched Molecules with VMDÓ, Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling, Vol. 28, No. 2, September 2009, pp. 131-139.

4)     Hultquist, C., Gain, J. and Cairns, D., ÒAn Adjectival Interface for Procedural Content GenerationÓ, Intelligent Computer Graphics 2009, Vol. 240, 2009, pp. 143-165.

5)     Neeser, R., Ackermann R. and Gain, J., ÒComparing the Accuracy and Precision of Three Techniques for Estimating Missing Landmarks when Reconstructing Fossil Hominin CraniaÓ, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 140, No. 1, February 2009, pp. 1-18.

6)     Gain, J. and Bechmann, D., ÒA Survey of Spatial Deformation from a User-Centered PerspectiveÓ, ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 27, No. 4, October 2008, pp. 1-21.

7)     Marais, P., Gain, J. and Shreiner, D., ÒDistance Ranked Connectivity Compression of Triangle MeshesÓ, Computer Graphics Forum, pp. 813-823, Vol. 26, No. 4, December 2007, pp. 813-823.

8)     Marais, P. and Gain, J., ÒHigh fidelity compression of irregularly sampled height-fieldsÓ, South African Computer Journal, Vol. 38, June 2007, pp. 40-50.

9)     Merry, B., Marais, P. and Gain, J., ÒAnimation Space: a Truly Linear Framework for Character AnimationÓ, ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 25, No. 4, October 2006, pp. 1400-1423.

10)   Winterbottom, C., Blake, E. and Gain, J., ÒUsing Visualizations to Support Design and Debugging in Virtual RealityÓ, in Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4291/2006 – Advances in Visual Computing, Springer-Verlag, November 2006, pp. 465-474.

11)   Merry, B., Marais, P. and Gain, J., ÒCompression of Dense and Regular Point CloudsÓ, Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 25, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 709-716.

12)   Kuttel, M., Gain, J., Burger, A. and Eborn, I., ÒTechniques for Visualization of Carbohydrate MoleculesÓ, Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modeling, Vol. 25, 2006, pp. 380-388 (available on-line).

13)   Gain, J. and Marais, P., ÒWarp SculptingÓ, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 11 , No. 2 , March/April 2005, pp. 217-227.

14)   Southern, R. and Gain, J., ÒCreation and Control of Real-time Continuous Level of Detail on Programmable Graphics HardwareÓ, Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 22, No. 1, March 2003, pp. 35-48.

15)   Gain, J. and Dodgson, N., ÒPreventing Self-Intersection under Free-Form DeformationÓ, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 7, No. 4, Oct/Dec 2001, pp. 289-298.

16)   Bangay, S., Gain, J., Watkins, G. and Watkins, K., Building the Second Generation of Parallel/Distributed Virtual Reality Systems, Parallel Computing, 23 (7), 1997, pp. 991-1000.

Conference Publications (peer reviewed)

1)     Reid, A., Gain, J. and Kuttel, M., ÒDynamic Load Balancing of Lattice Boltzmann Free-Surface Fluid AnimationsÓ, In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, Visualisation and Interaction in Africa (Afrigraph 2010), Franchhoek, South Africa, 21-23 June 2010, ACM Press, pp. 91-100.

2)     Jansen van Vuuren, J., Kuttel, M. and Gain, J, ÒVisualization of Solution Sets from Automated Docking of Molecular StructuresÓ, In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, Visualisation and Interaction in Africa (Afrigraph 2010), Franchhoek, South Africa, 21-23 June 2010, ACM Press, pp. 101-110.

3)     Baxter, R., Crumley, Z., Neeser, R. and Gain, J., ÒAutomatic Addition of Physics Components to Procedural ContentÓ, In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, Visualisation and Interaction in Africa (Afrigraph 2010), Franchhoek, South Africa, 21-23 June 2010, ACM Press, pp. 101-110.

4)     Gain, J., Marais, P. and Strasser, W., ÒTerrain SketchingÓ, I3D2009: The 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 27 February - 1 March 2009, ACM Press, pp. 31-38.

5)     De Kadt, C., Gain, J. and Marais, P., ÒRevisiting District Six: A Case Study of Digital Heritage Reconstruction from Archival PhotographsÓ, In Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, Visualisation and Interaction in Africa (Afrigraph 2009), Pretoria, South Africa, 3-5 February 2009, ACM Press, pp. 13-21.

6)     Merry, B., Marais, P. and Gain, J., ÒAnalytic simplification of animated charactersÓ, In Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, Visualisation and Interaction in Africa (Afrigraph 2009), Pretoria, South Africa, 3-5 February 2009, ACM Press, pp. 37-45.

7)     Chen, W., Marsden, G. and Gain, J.,  ÒControl Mechanisms for First Person Shooter Games on PDAÓ, OzCHI 2008.

8)     Lane, J., Engelbrecht, A. and Gain, J., ÒParticle Swarm Optimization with Spatially Meaningful NeighboursÓ, IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, St. Louis (U.S.A), 21-23 September 2008, IEEE, pp. 1-8.

9)     Perkins, S., Jacka, D., Marais, P. and Gain, J., ÒA Spatial Awareness Framework for Enhancing Game Agent BehaviourÓ, Sandbox '08: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on Video games, Los Angeles (U.S.A), August 2008, ACM Press, pp. 15-22.

10)   Jacka, D., Reid, A., Merry, B. and Gain, J., ÒA Comparison of Linear Skinning Techniques for Character AnimationÓ, Afrigraph 2007, Grahamstown, South Africa, October 2007, ACM Press, pp. 177-186.

11)   Hultquist, C., Gain, J. and Cairns, D., ÒAffective Scene GenerationÓ, Afrigraph 2006, Cape Town, South Africa, 25-27 January 2006, ACM Press, pp. 59-64.

12)   Merry, B., Marais, P. and Gain, J., ÒCompression of Dense and Regular Point CloudsÓ, Afrigraph 2006, Cape Town, South Africa, 25-27 January 2006, ACM Press, pp. 15-20. (republished in Computer Graphics Forum, see above).

13)   Steyn, B. and Gain, J., ÒTopology Alteration for Virtual Sculpting using Spatial DeformationÓ, Afrigraph 2003, 3-5 February 2003, ACM Press, pp. 63-68.

14)   Sharpe, A., Hampton, M., Nirenstein, S., Gain, J. and Blake, E., ÒAccelerating Ray Shooting through Aggressive 5D Visibility Pre-processingÓ, AFRIGRAPH 2003: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, Visualisation and Interaction in Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, 3-5 February 2003, ACM Press, pp. 95-100. 

15)   Nirenstein, S., Blake, E. and Gain, J., ÒExact From-Region Visibility CullingÓ, Rendering Techniques 2002: 13th Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, 26-28 June 2002, Pisa, ed. P. Debevec & S. Gibson, ACM Press, pp. 191-202.

16)   Gain, J. and Dodgson, N., ÒAdaptive Refinement and Decimation under Free-Form DeformationÓ, Eurographics UK '99, Cambridge (UK), 13-15 April 1999.

17) Bangay, S., Gain, J., Watkins, G. and Watkins, K., RhoVeR: Building the Second Generation of Parallel/Distributed Virtual Reality Systems, First Eurographics Workshop on Parallel Graphics and Visualisation, Bristol, U.K., 26-27 September 1996. (republished in Parallel Computing, see above)

Conference Abstracts (peer reviewed)

1)     Merry, B., Marais, P. and Gain, J., ÒNormal Transformations for Articulated ModelsÓ, in ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Conference Abstracts and Applications, August 2006.

2)     Gain, J. and Dodgson, N., ÒEnhancing the Efficiency and Versatility of Directly Manipulated Free-Form DeformationÓ, Technical Sketch, Conference Abstracts and Applications, SIGGRAPH '99, 8-13 August 1999, pp. 240.

3)     Gain, J. and Scott, J., ÒFast Polygon Mesh Querying by ExampleÓ, Technical Sketch, Conference Abstracts and Applications, SIGGRAPH '99, 8-13 August 1999, pp. 241.