Jernej Barbic

Associate professor of computer science,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.

Research interests: computer graphics, animation, interactive physics, finite element method, model reduction, deformable models, haptics, sound.

Office: SAL 240

Author of

Co-founder and CTO of

Students:

Current:
• Yijing Li, PhD cand.
• Danyong Zhao, PhD cand.
• Bohan Wang, PhD cand.
• Mianlun Zheng, PhD cand.

Past:
• Hongyi Xu, PhD ⇒ Disney Research
• Rodrigo Castiel Reis de Souza, BS cand.
• Yili Zhao, PhD ⇒ Facebook
• Weiwan Liu, MS ⇒ Nvidia
• Somya Sharma, MS ⇒ Microsoft
• Fun Shing Sin, MS ⇒ Rhythm & Hues ⇒ Blizzard
• Jay Whang, BS ⇒ Google ⇒ MS Stanford
• Daniel Schroeder, USC REU summer student ⇒ MS Cornell Univ. ⇒ Google

Teaching:

Spring 2019: CS-520 Computer Animation and Simulation
Spring 2019: CS-420 Computer Graphics
Spring 2018: CS-420 Computer Graphics
Spring 2017: CS-420 Computer Graphics
Spring 2016: CS-420 Computer Graphics
Spring 2015: CS-520 Computer Animation and Simulation
Spring 2015: CS-420 Computer Graphics
Spring 2014: CS-520 Computer Animation and Simulation
Spring 2014: CS-420 Computer Graphics
Spring 2013: CS-520 Computer Animation and Simulation
Spring 2013: CS-480 Computer Graphics
Spring 2012: CS-520 Computer Animation and Simulation
Spring 2012: CS-480 Computer Graphics
Spring 2011: CS-599 Physically Based Modeling for Interactive Simulation and Games
Spring 2011: CS-480 Computer Graphics
Spring 2010: CS-599 Physically Based Modeling for Interactive Simulation and Games

Awards:

USC Stevens Commercialization Award, 2017
Sloan Fellowship, 2014
Okawa Foundation Research Grant, 2014
MIT Technology Review,
35 Innovators Under 35 (in the world), 2011
NSF CAREER Award
Viterbi Early Career Chair, USC
Film credits: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013).

Publications:

Bohan Wang, George Matcuk, Jernej Barbič: Hand Modeling and Simulation Using Stabilized Magnetic Resonance Imaging, ACM Transactions on Graphics 38(4) (SIGGRAPH 2019), Los Angeles, CA, 2019
Yijing Li, Jernej Barbič: Multi-Resolution Modeling of Shapes in Contact, Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) 2019, Los Angeles, CA; and Proc. of the ACM in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (PACMCGIT), 2(2), 2019
Yijing Li, Jernej Barbič: Immersion of Self-Intersecting Solids and Surfaces, ACM Transactions on Graphics 37(4) (SIGGRAPH 2018), Vancouver, Canada, 2018
Danyong Zhao, Yijing Li, Jernej Barbič: 6-DoF Haptic Rendering of Static Coulomb Friction Using Linear Programming, IEEE Transactions on Haptics 2018, 11(3), 2018
Bohan Wang, Yili Zhao, Jernej Barbič: Botanical Materials Based on Biomechanics, ACM Transactions on Graphics 36(4) (SIGGRAPH 2017), Los Angeles, CA, USA
Hongyi Xu, Jernej Barbič: Example-Based Damping Design, ACM Transactions on Graphics 36(4) (SIGGRAPH 2017), Los Angeles, CA, USA
Yijing Li, Hongyi Xu, Jernej Barbič: Enriching Triangle Mesh Animations With Physically Based Simulation, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 23(10), 2017
Hongyi Xu, Jernej Barbič: 6-DoF Haptic Rendering using Continuous Collision Detection Between Points and Signed Distance Fields, IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 10(2), 2017
Danyong Zhao, Yijing Li, Jernej Barbič: Asynchronous Implicit Backward Euler Integration, Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) 2016, Zurich, Switzerland
James Jacobs, Jernej Barbič, Essex Edwards, Crawford Doran, Andy van Straten: How To Build a Human: Practical Physics-Based Character Animation, DigiPro Symposium, 2016
Hongyi Xu and Jernej Barbič: Pose-Space Subspace Dynamics, ACM Transactions on Graphics 35(4) (SIGGRAPH 2016), Anaheim, CA, USA
Hongyi Xu and Jernej Barbič: Adaptive 6-DoF Haptic Contact Stiffness Using the Gauss Map, IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 9(3), 2016
Yijing Li and Jernej Barbič: Stable Anisotropic Materials, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 21(10), 2015
Hongyi Xu, Fun Shing Sin, Yufeng Zhu, Jernej Barbič: Nonlinear Material Design Using Principal Stretches, ACM Transactions on Graphics 34(4) (SIGGRAPH 2015), Los Angeles, CA, USA
Yu Wang, Alec Jacobson, Jernej Barbič, Ladislav Kavan: Linear Subspace Design for Real-Time Shape Deformation, ACM Transactions on Graphics 34(4) (SIGGRAPH 2015), Los Angeles, CA, USA
Koki Nagano, Graham Fyffe, Oleg Alexander, Jernej Barbič, Hao Li, Abhijeet Ghosh, Paul Debevec: Skin Microstructure Deformation with Displacement Map Convolution, ACM Transactions on Graphics 34(4) (SIGGRAPH 2015), Los Angeles, CA, USA
Hongyi Xu, Yijing Li, Yong Chen, Jernej Barbič: Interactive Material Design Using Model Reduction, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 34(2), 2015
Hongyi Xu, Jernej Barbič: Continuous Collision Detection Between Points and Signed Distance Fields, Workshop on Virtual Reality Simulation and Physical Simulation, 2014
Yijing Li, Jernej Barbič: Stable Orthotropic Materials, Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) 2014, Copenhagen, Denmark, Honorable Mention Best Paper Award
Hongyi Xu, Jernej Barbič: Signed Distance Fields for Polygon Soup Meshes, Graphics Interface 2014, Montreal, Canada
Hongyi Xu, Yili Zhao, Jernej Barbič: Implicit Multibody Penalty-based Distributed Contact, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 20(9), 2014
Xu and Zhao both contributed equally to this paper, and should be considered equal first authors.
Yili Zhao, Jernej Barbič: Interactive Authoring of Simulation-Ready Plants, ACM Transactions on Graphics 32(4) (SIGGRAPH 2013), Anaheim, CA, USA, July 2013
Fun Shing Sin, Daniel Schroeder, Jernej Barbič: Vega: Nonlinear FEM Deformable Object Simulator, Computer Graphics Forum, 32(1), 2013, p. 38-50. Video.
Jernej Barbič, Fun Shing Sin, Eitan Grinspun: Interactive Editing of Deformable Simulations, ACM Transactions on Graphics 31(4) (SIGGRAPH 2012), Los Angeles, CA, USA, August 2012
Jernej Barbič, Yili Zhao: Real-time Large-deformation Substructuring, ACM Transactions on Graphics 30(4) (SIGGRAPH 2011), Vancouver, Canada, August 2011
Jernej Barbič, Doug L. James: Subspace Self-collision Culling, ACM Transactions on Graphics 29(4) (SIGGRAPH 2010), Los Angeles, CA, USA, July 2010
Jernej Barbič, Marco da Silva, Jovan Popović: Deformable Object Animation Using Reduced Optimal Control, ACM Transactions on Graphics 28(3) (SIGGRAPH 2009), New Orleans, LA, USA, August 2009
Jernej Barbič, Jovan Popović: Real-time Control of Physically Based Simulations using Gentle Forces, ACM Transactions on Graphics 27(5) (SIGGRAPH Asia 2008), Singapore, Dec 2008
Jernej Barbič, Doug L. James: Six-DoF Haptic Rendering of Contact Between Geometrically Complex Reduced Deformable Models, IEEE Trans. on Haptics, 1(1), 2008, p. 39-52
Jernej Barbič, Doug L. James: Time-critical Distributed Contact for 6-DoF Haptic Rendering of Adaptively Sampled Reduced Deformable Models, Best paper-and-presentation award, Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) 2007, p. 171-180, San Diego, CA, August 2007
Doug L. James, Jernej Barbič, Dinesh K. Pai: Precomputed Acoustic Transfer: Output-sensitive, Accurate Sound Generation for Geometrically Complex Vibration Sources, ACM Transactions on Graphics 25(3) (SIGGRAPH 2006), p. 987-995, Boston, MA, August 2006
Jernej Barbič, Doug L. James: Real-Time Subspace Integration for St.Venant-Kirchhoff Deformable Models, ACM Transactions on Graphics 24(3) (SIGGRAPH 2005), p. 982-990, Los Angeles, CA, August 2005
Jernej Barbič, Alla Safonova, Jia-Yu Pan, Christos Faloutsos, Jessica K. Hodgins, Nancy S. Pollard: Segmenting Motion Capture Data into Distinct Behaviors, Graphics Interface, p. 185-194, London, ON, Canada, 2004

Posters, Tech Reports, Courses, Conferences, Thesis:

Jernej Barbič: Nonlinear durometer: A device to measure linear and nonlinear stiffnesses of elastic objects. Technical Report, Computer Science Department, USC, 26 March 2018.
Yijing Li, Hongyi Xu, Jernej Barbič: Enriching Triangle Mesh Animations With Physically Based Simulation. Technical Report, Computer Science Department, USC. Note: Journal version now available.
Conference chair, ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA), 2015.
Co-organized a workshop on Computer Animation: Physically Based Methods in Barbados, 2013.
Jernej Barbič: Model reduction for deformable object simulations, Part 2 of ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 Course by Eftychios Sifakis and Jernej Barbič: FEM Simulation of 3D Deformable Solids: A practitioner's guide to theory, discretization and model reduction, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2012.
Jernej Barbič: Exact Corotational Linear FEM Stiffness Matrix, Technical Report, Computer Science Department, USC, 2012.
Jernej Barbič, Gary Miller: A Quadratic Running Time Example for Ruppert's Refinement Algorithm, Technical Report, Computer Science Department, USC, 2012.
Wan-Chun Ma, Yi-Hua Wang, Graham Fyffe, Jernej Barbič, Bing-Yu Chen, Paul Debevec: A blendshape model that incorporates physical interaction, Poster, SIGGRAPH Asia 2011, Hong Kong.
Funshing Sin, Yufeng Zhu, Yongqiang Li, Daniel Schroeder, Jernej Barbič: Invertible Isotropic Hyperelasticity using SVD Gradients, Poster, Symposium on Computer Animation 2011, Vancouver, Canada. Poster video.
PhD thesis: Jernej Barbič: Real-time Reduced Large-Deformation Models and Distributed Contact for Computer Graphics and Haptics (pdf; 22 Mb), Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, August 2007 (note: text improved (errata incorporated) in June 2009)
Doug L. James, Jernej Barbič, Christopher Twigg: Squashing Cubes: Automating Deformable Model Construction for Graphics, Sketches & Applications of SIGGRAPH 2004, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Presentations (on my work and work of others) :

Project webpages (above) have slides for all of my conference presentations.
Multi-core architectures (5 Mb; class lecture slides 15-213 Introduction to Computer Systems; I updated the slides in 2007)
Voxmap-pointshell algorithm for 6-DOF haptic rendering (2.5 Mb; CMU graphics lab seminar)
2D mesh generation, Delaunay triangulations, Ruppert's algorithm (3 Mb; overview presentation with some research results)

Demos and coding:

Vega FEM Library (a physics library for 3D deformable object simulation).
The rest of my code is available here (most of it is in Vega FEM now, however, including model reduction).
6-DoF haptic demo (SCA 2007 paper; large dynamic reduced deformations + collision detection + contact for complex geometry).
Real-time deformations demo ("StVK" SIGGRAPH 2005 paper; reduced geometrically nonlinear FEM).
Real-time sound demo ("PAT" SIGGRAPH 2006 paper).
How to compile, link and use ARPACK in Windows with Microsoft Visual Studio.
Motion capture player for ASF/AMC motion capture sequences from the CMU motion capture database.

Student Applications:

Prospective MS students: please do not contact me because I am not involved with the MS admission process.
Prospective PhD students: if you are interested in working with me, please include my name in your application.
Current MS students: if you interested in working with me, take one of my classes and perform well.

About me:

My name is pronounced like 'Yerney Barbeach'. Jernej is the Slovenian equivalent of Bartholomew. Sanctus Bartolomaeus => Shem-Bertelemej => Shem-ernej => Jernej.
I was born in 1976 in Šempeter pri Gorici, Slovenia, EU (Yugoslavia at the time).
I spent my childhood in western Slovenia, near the border with Italy, and two hours away from Venice. My hometown is in the Alps, not far from the Adriatic Sea. Here is my favorite wild animal: capra ibex.
As an undergrad, I lived in Ljubljana (capital of Slovenia).
I then lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, and Boston, Massachusetts, USA. I now live in Los Angeles, California.
I like sports. My favorite ones are triathlon, swimming, running and (mountain) biking.

Volunteer work, writing:

Since 2009, I have been trying to promote a social security agreement between the United States and Slovenia. This agreement is missing, and would greatly help both Slovenian citizens in the US, and American citizens living in Slovenia. I spoke to several high-ranking Slovenian officials, and promoted the cause in Slovenian media. Here is my blog posting from 2012 (in Slovenian) about why it is needed: blog Kvarkadabra. There is good news; the two governments are on their way to make it happen. More about the process is here (in Slovenian). If you want to know what this agreement means for you as a Slovenian living in the USA, click here (in Slovenian).
- Update 1 (January 2017): both governments (Slovenia and USA) signed the agreement. The final step that still needs to happen is the ratification in both parliaments. See here.
- Update 2 (July 2017): the parliament of Slovenia ratified the agreement. See here. Only remaining step now is the ratification in US Congress.
- Update 3 (May 2018): the US President and the White House commended and trasmitted the agreement to US Congress. See here. As you can see in the link, the statement contains a positive endorsement of the agreement, so this is great news.
- Update 4 (March 2019): the agreement has been signed by US Congress. It entered into force on Feb 1, 2019! You can see it here.
My translation of "Južni otok", a well-known Slovenian poem by Kajetan Kovič, into English.
I wrote a guide for new Carnegie Mellon students to help them settle into their life in Pittsburgh.
I wrote a guide on applying to grad school in US (in Slovenian): Kako uspeti pri prijavi na študij na ameriške univerze.
(for Slovenian readers, interested in US higher education) Analiza visokega šolstva v ZDA in Sloveniji, s stališča mladega profesorja na začetku kariere.
(for Slovenian readers, interested in intellectual property and creativity) Ali so ustvarjalci dovolj nagrajeni za svoje delo? (esej)