Toggle search
Toggle menu
5.1K
5.9K
229
48K
VR & AR Wiki
Toggle preferences menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Ming C. Lin

From VR & AR Wiki
More actions

Ming C. Lin is a Taiwan-born computer scientist whose research on collision detection, physically based simulation, haptic rendering and sound rendering has been applied to virtual reality, computer graphics and robotics. She is a Distinguished University Professor and the Dr. Barry Mersky and Capital One E-Nnovate Endowed Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), which she joined in 2018 as chair of the computer science department after 20 years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC).[1][2] She received the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award in 2010, edited IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics from 2011 to 2014, and co-founded Impulsonic, the 3D audio company whose Phonon software became Valve's Steam Audio.[1][3][4]

Reviewed 7 October 2026. Checked education, positions, collision detection, haptics, sound rendering and Impulsonic history, IEEE VR and TVCG roles, UMD appointments and awards against UMD and UNC pages, the 2015 IEEE oral history, CRA documents, UploadVR and Crossref records for all cited papers. About review dates.

Early life and education

Lin was born in Taiwan, and her family immigrated to the United States in 1980 and settled in California.[3] She earned her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.[2] Her 1993 doctoral dissertation, Efficient Collision Detection for Animation and Robotics, was supervised by John Canny.[5] The dissertation, also issued as a Berkeley technical report, centered on a fast incremental method for computing the distance between two convex polyhedra by tracking their closest features, which exploits geometric coherence between time steps to reach expected constant running time per test; it extended the method to non-convex and curved objects and to environments with many moving objects.[6] The core algorithm, known as the Lin-Canny algorithm, was published with Canny at the 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.[3][7]

Career

Early positions

After her Ph.D., Lin taught for a year at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and then held a faculty position in North Carolina.[3] From 1995 to 1997 she was the founding program manager for computer science and discrete mathematics at the U.S. Army Research Office, which funds university research.[8] She held an adjunct appointment at UNC during that period and joined the UNC faculty when she left the Army Research Office around 1997.[3]

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

At UNC Lin co-led the GAMMA research group with Dinesh Manocha, her husband and fellow Canny student, and was later named the John R. and Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor of Computer Science.[3][9] In her 2015 IEEE oral history she credited UNC colleagues Fred Brooks and Henry Fuchs as influences, and said that UNC's large virtual reality and graphics program led her to work more on those areas than on robotics.[3]

Collision detection libraries. The group released a series of collision detection packages for interactive simulation. I-COLLIDE, presented at the 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics by Jonathan D. Cohen, Lin, Manocha and Madhav Ponamgi, targeted exact collision detection in large environments.[10] The OBBTree paper by Stefan Gottschalk, Lin and Manocha at SIGGRAPH 1996 introduced a hierarchy of oriented bounding boxes (OBBs) for fast interference tests; the group's RAPID (Robust and Accurate Polygon Interference Detection) library provides OBB hierarchies and exact triangle tests.[11][12][13] ACM later reprinted the OBBTree paper in the 2023 collection Seminal Graphics Papers: Pushing the Boundaries, Volume 2.[14] V-COLLIDE, described at the 1997 VRML symposium, connected accelerated collision detection to VRML browsers so that worlds with many complex moving objects could be checked at interactive rates; it combined an n-body test that exploits coherence between time steps with RAPID's oriented-bounding-box hierarchy and an exact triangle test.[15][13] Lin said in 2015 that probably more than 50 companies, including CAD/CAM, automotive, aircraft design, robotics and medical imaging firms, had incorporated the group's libraries.[3]

Haptic rendering. Lin moved into haptics after SensAble Technologies, the MIT spin-off that developed the PHANToM haptic device, contacted her because of her collision detection work; she worked in the area for about seven years, mainly with her Ph.D. student Miguel Otaduy.[3] Otaduy and Lin's SIGGRAPH 2003 paper on "sensation preserving" simplification built multiresolution object hierarchies, guided by human tactual perception of contact, to speed up collision queries for haptic display of complex object-object interaction.[16] The two edited Haptic Rendering: Foundations, Algorithms, and Applications (A K Peters, 2008), a 623-page survey of haptic rendering algorithms and their use in medical training, virtual prototyping, scientific visualization and other applications.[17]

Sound rendering and Impulsonic. With Nikunj Raghuvanshi, Lin published work on interactive sound synthesis for large-scale environments (2006) and, with Raghuvanshi and Rahul Narain, on efficient sound propagation using adaptive rectangular decomposition (2009).[18][19] In 2011 UNC Ph.D. students Anish Chandak and Lakulish Antani approached Lin and Manocha about building a company on the group's physically based sound simulation research, which led to Impulsonic.[9] Valve acquired Impulsonic for an undisclosed sum in January 2017; the company's main product was Phonon, a physically based sound propagation and 3D audio system for VR software with plug-ins for engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine.[20] Chandak and Antani went on to develop Steam Audio at Valve as a direct continuation of Phonon.[9] UMD describes Steam Audio as open source and used in VR applications and several game engines.[4]

Multi-agent navigation. The 2008 ICRA paper "Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles for real-time multi-agent navigation" by Jur van den Berg, Lin and Manocha presented a method for robots and virtual agents to avoid collisions with one another while moving in shared spaces.[21][22] It received the IEEE ICRA Most Influential Paper Award in 2026.[22]

IEEE VR and TVCG

Lin said in 2015 that her haptics work drew her into virtual reality research and the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference, and she chaired the conference's steering committee in 2010 and 2011.[3] She was editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) from 2011 to 2014; her first editorial as the new editor-in-chief appeared in the March 2011 issue.[3][23] In her 2023 Computing Research Association board nomination statement, she wrote that during her term she introduced a hybrid publication model for several IEEE VGTC conferences that increased both conference attendance and the journal's impact factor.[8]

University of Maryland

Lin joined UMD in 2018 as chair of the Department of Computer Science and held the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair of Computer Science from 2018 to 2020.[2][24] She was named a Distinguished University Professor, UMD's highest academic honor, in 2019.[2] She has joint appointments in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Maryland Robotics Center, and has been an Amazon Scholar since 2020.[24] UMD reports that her Amazon work on learning-based 3D garment draping led to a real-time virtual try-on technology that Amazon launched in 2021, and that she holds five patents in areas including physics-based sound synthesis and propagation.[4] Her personal UMD page lists her as co-director of the GAMMA research groups at both UMD and UNC.[25] The Computing Research Association elected her its treasurer, with the officer term beginning on 1 July 2025.[26]

Awards and honors

Year Honor
1995 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award[4]
1997 Honda Research Initiation Award[1]
2003 Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement[1]
2010 IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award, "in recognition of her seminal contributions in the area of interactive physics-based interaction and simulation for virtual environments"[1][4]
2011 ACM Fellow, "for contribution in geometric computing and physics-based modeling for computer graphics, virtual environments, and robotics"[1]
2012 IEEE Fellow, for "contributions to real-time physics-based interaction and simulation for virtual environments, robotics and haptics"[1]
2017 Eurographics Fellow[1]
2020 SIGGRAPH Academy, "for contributions in collision detection, physics simulation, natural phenomena, crowd animation, haptics, and sound rendering"[1]
2020 Washington Academy of Sciences Distinguished Career in Computer Science Award[1]
2021 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (2021 class)[4]
2022 IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy, inaugural class of 49 members[24]
2026 IEEE ICRA Most Influential Paper Award, with Jur van den Berg and Dinesh Manocha[22]

The inaugural IEEE Virtual Reality Academy class also included UMD alumni Michael Antonov and Brendan Iribe.[24] UMD reports that Lin has authored or co-authored more than 300 refereed publications and has authored or co-edited five books.[4]

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 "Ming Lin". UMD Department of Computer Science. University of Maryland. https://www.cs.umd.edu/people/lin. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair of Computer Science Ming C. Lin Named 2019 Distinguished University Professor". UMD Department of Computer Science. University of Maryland. 2019-08-14. https://www.cs.umd.edu/node/20462. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Peter Asaro (interviewer) (2015-01-23). "Oral-History:Ming Lin". Engineering and Technology History Wiki. IEEE History Center. https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Ming_Lin. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 "UMD Computer Scientist Ming Lin Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors". College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. University of Maryland. 2021-12-07. https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/umd-computer-scientist-ming-lin-elected-fellow-national-academy-inventors. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  5. ↑ "Ming Chieh Lin". Mathematics Genealogy Project. North Dakota State University. https://mathgenealogy.com/id.php?id=85949. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  6. ↑ Ming C. Lin (1994). "Efficient Collision Detection for Animation and Robotics". EECS Technical Reports, UCB/ERL M94/13. University of California, Berkeley. https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1994/2514.html. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  7. ↑ M. C. Lin, J. F. Canny (1991). "A fast algorithm for incremental distance calculation". Proceedings of the 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1008-1014. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.1991.131723. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "2023 Board Nominee: Ming Lin". Computing Research Association. 2023-02. https://cra.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Ming-Lin.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Patrick Seelinger (2017-03-13). "Real Sound in a Virtual World". Endeavors. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://collegearchive.unc.edu/?p=18823. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  10. ↑ Jonathan D. Cohen, Ming C. Lin, Dinesh Manocha, Madhav Ponamgi (1995). "I-COLLIDE: an interactive and exact collision detection system for large-scale environments". Proceedings of the 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, p. 189. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/199404.199437. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  11. ↑ S. Gottschalk, M. C. Lin, D. Manocha (1996-08). "OBBTree: a hierarchical structure for rapid interference detection". Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 96, pp. 171-180. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/237170.237244. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  12. ↑ "RAPID - Robust and Accurate Polygon Interference Detection System". GAMMA Research Group. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://gamma.cs.unc.edu/OBB/. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 "V-COLLIDE - Collision Detection for Arbitrary Polygonal Objects". GAMMA Research Group. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://gamma.cs.unc.edu/V-COLLIDE/. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  14. ↑ S. Gottschalk, M. C. Lin, D. Manocha (2023-08). "OBBTree: A Hierarchical Structure for Rapid Interference Detection". Seminal Graphics Papers: Pushing the Boundaries, Volume 2, pp. 757-766. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3596711.3596791. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  15. ↑ Thomas C. Hudson, Ming C. Lin, Jonathan Cohen, Stefan Gottschalk, Dinesh Manocha (1997-02). "V-COLLIDE: accelerated collision detection for VRML". Proceedings of the Second Symposium on Virtual Reality Modeling Language, p. 117. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/253437.253472. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  16. ↑ Miguel A. Otaduy, Ming C. Lin (2003-07). "Sensation preserving simplification for haptic rendering". ACM Transactions on Graphics, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 543-553. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/882262.882305. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  17. ↑ "Haptic Rendering: Foundations, Algorithms, and Applications". Routledge. A K Peters/CRC Press. 2008. https://www.routledge.com/products/9780429062513. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  18. ↑ Nikunj Raghuvanshi, Ming C. Lin (2006). "Interactive sound synthesis for large scale environments". Proceedings of the 2006 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, p. 101. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/1111411.1111429. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  19. ↑ Nikunj Raghuvanshi, Rahul Narain, Ming C. Lin (2009-09). "Efficient and Accurate Sound Propagation Using Adaptive Rectangular Decomposition". IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 789-801. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2009.28. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  20. ↑ Jamie Feltham (2017-01-12). "Sounds Good: Valve Acquires 3D Audio Company Impulsonic". UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/valve-acquires-3d-audio-company-impulsonic/. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  21. ↑ Jur van den Berg, Ming Lin, Dinesh Manocha (2008-05). "Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles for real-time multi-agent navigation". 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1928-1935. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2008.4543489. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 "Lin and Manocha Receive 2026 IEEE ICRA Most Influential Paper Award". GAMMA Research Group. University of Maryland. https://gamma.umd.edu/media/lin_manocha_paper_award2026/. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  23. ↑ Ming C. Lin (2011-03). "A Message From the New Editor-in-Chief". IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 17, no. 3, p. 263. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2011.15. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 "UMD Computer Scientist Ming Lin Inducted into IEEE Virtual Reality Academy". UMD Department of Computer Science. University of Maryland. 2022-04-10. https://www.cs.umd.edu/article/2022/04/umd-computer-scientist-ming-lin-inducted-ieee-virtual-reality-academy. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  25. ↑ "Ming C. Lin". University of Maryland. https://www.cs.umd.edu/~lin/. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  26. ↑ Matt Hazenbush (2025-03). "CRA Update: February 2025 Board Meeting Highlights". Computing Research News. Computing Research Association. https://cra.org/crn/2025/03/cra-update-february-2025-board-meeting-highlights. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
Retrieved from "https://vrarwiki.com/index.php?title=Ming_C._Lin&oldid=47704"