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SDSC's Director of Visualization Mike Bailey will be a busy man at this year's SIGGRAPH computer graphics convention. As he has done in previous years, Bailey will teach the day-long "Introduction to Computer Graphics" course, which is one of the most popular attractions of the conference. Bailey also will be one of four computer visualization experts to teach a second, half-day course, "3D Hardcopy: Converting Virtual Reality to Physical Models," which draws on his work with rapid prototyping systems in SDSC's Design Visualization Laboratory (http://dvl.sdsc.edu/)

Attendees will be in for a treat - Bailey is well-known on the UCSD campus for his enthusiastic teaching style, entertaining presentations, and effective lessons. Last November he was named by a poll of graduating seniors as the "Teacher of the Year" for the UCSD Computer Science and Engineering department - for the fifth year in a row. Bailey is an adjunct professor in both the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering departments; his courses typically have waiting lists of dozens of students. Bailey also was cited for his "truly outstanding commitment to teaching and for the inspiration [he has] brought to the education and lives of our students" when he received the 2002 Barbara J. and Paul D. Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award for Non-Senate Members from the UCSD Committee on Distinguished Teaching.

Bailey has an enthusiastic, animated teaching style

Bailey heads the Visualization Group at SDSC, and runs the Center's VisLab computer graphics facility and the Design Visualization Lab, which constructs solid models for scientific visualization. His research interests include a variety of topics related to visualization, including computer graphics, virtual reality, animation, stereographics, geometric modeling, solid hardcopy, and computer-assisted design.

Over the past 30 years, ACM SIGGRAPH has grown from a handful of computer graphics enthusiasts to a diverse group of researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists, and other professionals who share an interest in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The organization sponsors the annual SIGGRAPH conference, the world's largest exposition and marketplace of computer graphics and interactive techniques.

SIGGRAPH 2003 will be held July 27-31 in San Diego, at the San Diego Convention Center. (For information, see http://www.siggraph.org/s2003/.)

The Introduction to Computer Graphics course will be held Sunday, July 27, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in room 14 A-B of the San Diego Convention Center. The class will be a relaxed guide to the beginner both to computer graphics and to the SIGGRAPH conference experience. The course will explain to a non-specialist audience - people with a basic understanding of computers and algebra - how computer graphics works at the hardware and software levels, and will cover application areas such as modeling, rendering, animation, visualization, and virtual reality. A special lesson unit will advise attendees on how to attend the SIGGRAPH conference to get the most out of the experience.

This is Bailey's ninth year teaching the course, which he organized and which is one of the best-attended events at SIGGRAPH. As in previous years, Andrew Glassner of Coyote Wind Studios will be co-presenter.

This course is open to all SIGGRAPH 2003 attendees. (All other courses require Full Conference registration.) For more information, see http://www.siggraph.org/s2003/conference/courses/bailey.html.

The course on 3D Hardcopy: Converting Virtual Reality to Physical Models will be held on Tuesday, July 29, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in room 17 A-B of the Convention Center. Organized by Sara McMains of the University of California, Berkeley, and taught by her, Bailey, Richard Crawford of the University of Texas at Austin, and Carlo Séquin of UC Berkeley, the half-day course will provide an introduction to 3D layered manufacturing - the processes by which three dimensional parts are created by computer control for rapid prototyping and scientific visualization. The course describes the techniques that commercial systems use to build 3D parts and explains which technologies are most appropriate for various geometries and applications. It also covers software techniques for transforming a virtual reality model into realizable geometry and a process plan for a layered-manufacturing system. To illustrate the effectiveness of 3D hardcopy for scientific visualization, Bailey will bring several of the solid objects created in his Design Visualization Laboraotry, such as scaled-up models of proteins and other complex molecules, landforms on Earth, Mars, and Venus, and life-size replicas of living human embryos created from 3D ultrasound scans.

For more information, see http://www.siggraph.org/s2003/conference/courses/mcmains.html.