Welcome to Shylah Thurman's CRA DMP Webpage!

This year I am participating in the Distributed Mentorship Project. I am doing research at Carnegie Mellon University, under Professor Jessica Hodgins.

The Computer Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) hosts the Distributed Mentorship Project (DMP). DMP is a highly valuable experience for Computer Science and Computer Engineering undergraduates that want to further advance to graduate school. Students chosen to participate in the project perform a summer of research at a mentor's research institution. Students are directly involved in research at their assigned university. They interact and work alongside with a combination of professors, graduate students and other undergraduates to experience the procedures of professional academic research.

My Research Project Description:

This summer I am working on the process of integrating the use of photorealistic and nonphotorealistic rendering on a surface or object. Currently I am working on a plugin implement this idea on any given object in a maya project interface, using MEL(Maya Embedded Language). In addition, my plugin would allow any part of a separate surface or object that is translated or static in a particular rendered region to also obtain the properties of the region that it is residing in.

In addtion to working with Jessica Hodgins, this project is also involving Jim Duesing, an art professor at CMU. The idea of integrating nonphotorealistic and photorealistic rendering is based on his artistic vision within a technical environment.