Brian A. Barsky is a professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, working in

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

and

geometric modeling __NOTOC__ Geometric modeling is a branch of applied mathematics and computational geometry that studies methods and algorithms for the mathematical description of shapes. The shapes studied in geometric modeling are mostly two- or three-dimensio ...

as well as in

optometry Optometry is a specialized health care profession that involves examining the eyes and related structures for defects or abnormalities. Optometrists are health care professionals who typically provide comprehensive primary eye care. In the Un ...

and vision science. He is a Professor of Computer Science and Vision Science and an Affiliate Professor of Optometry. He is also a member of the Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering, an inter-campus program, between UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco.

Early life and education

Barsky holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

, an M.S. in computer graphics and computer science from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in Ithaca, and a D.C.S. in engineering and a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Univer ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...

Career

Barsky was a visiting professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, in the Department of Computer Graphics and Multimedia in the Faculty of Information Technology at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic, in the Machine Vision and Pattern Recognition Laboratory at the Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland, at the Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale de Lille (LIFL) of l'Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille (USTL), at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong, at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, in the Modélisation Géométrique et Infographie Interactive group at l'Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Nantes and l'Ecole Centrale de Nantes, in Nantes, at the University of Toronto, at the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore, at the Laboratoire Image of l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris, and he was a visiting researcher with the Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing Group at the Sentralinsitutt for Industriell Forskning (Central Institute for Industrial Research) in Oslo. He is a UC Berkeley Presidential Chair Fellow, a Warren and Marjorie Minner Faculty Fellow in Engineering Ethics and Professional/Social Responsibility, and an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

Awards

Barsky won an IBM Faculty Development Award and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. He was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry (F.A.A.O.)

Books

He is a co-author or author of several books: ''An Introduction to Splines for Use in Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling'', ''Making Them Move: Mechanics, Control, and Animation of Articulated Figures'', and ''Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling Using Beta-splines''. See List of books in computational geometry.

Research

Along with You-Dong Liang, he was an author and namesake of the efficient “ Liang-Barsky algorithm” for clipping in computer graphics. Barsky created the ''Beta-spline'' curve and surface representation which introduced the concept of geometric continuity for

smoothness In mathematical analysis, the smoothness of a function is a property measured by the number of continuous derivatives it has over some domain, called ''differentiability class''. At the very minimum, a function could be considered smooth if ...

and ''Gⁿ'' notation to the fields o
computer-aided geometric design
and

. He introduced vision-realistic rendering to simulate human vision based on ocular measurements of an individual. Using these measurements, synthetics images are generated. This process modifies input images to simulate the appearance of the scene for the individual. That work led to an investigation with Fu-Chung Huang of how to display images to compensate for the specific optical aberrations of the viewer, resulting in vision-correcting displays. Given the measurements of the optical aberrations of a user’s eye, a vision correcting display produces a transformed image that when viewed by this individual will appear in sharp focus. This could impact computer monitors, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. Vision correction could be provided in some cases where eyeglasses are ineffective. This research was selected by ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it ...

'' as one of 2014's ten annual "World Changing Ideas.” Barsky developed a novel

contact lens Contact lenses, or simply contacts, are thin lenses placed directly on the surface of the eyes. Contact lenses are ocular prosthetic devices used by over 150 million people worldwide, and they can be worn to correct vision or for cosmeti ...

design to help restore vision to people with

cornea The cornea is the transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris, pupil, and anterior chamber. Along with the anterior chamber and lens, the cornea refracts light, accounting for approximately two-thirds of the eye's total optical ...

problems.

References

External links

Brian A. Barsky's home page at U.C. Berkeley

* ttp://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/b/Barsky:Brian_A=.html Published papers {{DEFAULTSORT:Barsky, Brian A.. Living people American computer scientists Canadian computer scientists Computer graphics researchers Computer graphics professionals McGill University Faculty of Science alumni Cornell University alumni University of Utah alumni UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty Year of birth missing (living people)