Dr. Paul J. Diefenbach

Experience

Sept. 2005 – Present Drexel University, Philadelphia PA
Co-director RePlay Lab on Gaming Technology
Asst. Professor, Digital Media, College of Media Arts and Design
Asst. Professor, Dept. of Computer Science

• Established and instructed undergraduate Digital Media gaming course sequence
• First graduate professor in Digital Media
• Founded RePlay Lab for research in gaming technology (replay.drexel.edu)

June 1991 - Present OpenWorlds Inc., Philadelphia PA
Founder and CTO

• Founded OpenWorlds Inc. Since 1996, provided technology vision and led team of 4-15 for creation of OpenWorlds™ -- a suite of C++ products for extensible Web multi-media and 3D graphics applications.
• Over 450,000 lines C++ and Java code on Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms.
• Major customers include: Sharp Electronics, Mitsubishi, SGI, Sony, NASA, etc.
• Used by Sony for next-generation interactive multi-media television research.
• Co-developed business plan and secured $300,000 in expansion financing.
• Participated in all aspects of marketing, sales, procurement, contract negotiation, and customer relations. Individual sales and contracts ranged from $20,000 - $250,000.
• Controlled budgeting, hiring, management, and finance decisions of technical team.
• Authored proposals and served as P.I. or technical lead for contracts totaling over $1M from Army, NASA, and Hughes Missile Systems. All performed on time and within budget.
• Consulted for General Motors, Battelle, Land Rover, and Lockheed. Topics include: M&S, human simulation, intelligent agents, gaming and training, and automation.
• Recognized leader in 3D graphics. Contributed to industry standards such as H-Anim, MPEG-4, XMSF. Co-authored first draft of X3D standard. Led industry X3D Browser Working Group technical team.
• Expert consultant for leading 3D companies such as nVidia and SGI.

January 1999 – 2002 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Adjunct Asst. Professor, Moore School of Computer Science Engineering

• Instructed Visual Simulation courses in Digital Media Design of 30-50 students. Developed two courses.

June 1987 - June 1991 Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton NJ
Research Scientist, Contractor

• Created first Distributed Heterogeneous Programming Language for patented factory automation method.
• Designed and wrote controller software for Laser Range Finder

June 1985 - June 1987 W. Humprey Associates, Princeton NJ

Chief System Software Engineer

• Created entire system software for Sidewinder Missile Launcher Automatic Test System (ATS).

Education

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Doctor of Philosophy, Computer Science, February 1996. GPA 4.0

Thesis: Multi-pass Pipeline Rendering: Interaction and Realism through Hardware Provisions

Master of Science in Engineering, August 1991. GPA 3.9

• Ph.D. was the first coordinated use of multi-pass rendering to produce photo-realistic images using graphics hardware. This pioneering thesis work in rendering is required reading at major hardware manufacturers, and serves as technical basis for current generation of rendering and gaming engines.
• Key developer of Jack® software at Human Modeling and Simulation (HMS) Laboratory. Work included:
• Creation of advanced animation editing, control, and recording systems.
• Development of texture and lighting control.
• Addition of free-form deformations, mass-spring deformations, and physics modeling
• Modifications to human anthropometrics and behavioral systems (i.e. balance, walk)
• Fixes and advancements for NLP constraint solver
• Work on distributed computing and intelligent agents.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY

Bachelor of Science, May 1989. GPA 3.4

Major: Computer Science. Minor: Electrical Engineering.

Skills

+Real-time multi-platform, software design, development, and project lead. +Proposal writing

+Technologies: C++, Java, XML, TCP/IP, COM, DirectX, ActiveX +Platforms: Unix, Windows, Linux

+Modeling/Animation: Maya, 3D Studio Max

+Rendering: OpenGL, Optimizer, Performer, Fahrenheit, D3D, Multi-pass rendering

+Other: OO design, Human/agent simulation, Web technologies, Parsers, Distributed Learning ADL/SCORM, 3D Game Engines

Presentations

“Creating a Multi-Discipline Gaming Curriculum: Avoiding Mistakes, Missteps, and Growing Pains”, SIGGRAPH Asia 2008, Singapore, 2008.

“Extending Animator Tool Sets for Humanoid Robotics,” 5th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence ( URAI 2008), Seoul, Korea, November 2008.

“Building Planet Diggum: A Case Study of Multi-Discipline, Multi-Touch Gaming Collaboration,” SIGGRAPH 2008, Los Angeles, CA 2008.

“Applications of multi-touch gaming technology to middle-school education,” William Muto, Paul Diefenbach, SIGGRAPH 2008 posters, Los Angeles, CA, August 2008.

“Information overload: a collaborative multimedia dance performance,” Lauren Mandilian, Paul Diefenbach. SIGGRAPH 2008 posters, Los Angeles, CA, August 2008.

“Teaching Soft-skills: Digital Game Development in a Multi-Discipline Environment” Eurographics 2008, Crete, Greece, 2008.

“Planet Diggum: Multi-point Touch and Gesture Control of Gaming Environments” Workshop on Visual Languages and Computing, San Francisco CA, 2007.

“OpenWorlds Demonstrations.” SIGGRAPH Web3D Roundup, 1998-2002.

“X3D Architecture.” Web3D 2002 Symposium, Tempe Arizona, 2002.

“X3D Rendering Support.” Web3D 2001 Symposium, Paderborn, Germany, 2001.

“Supporting and Extending VRML In Your Application Using OpenWorlds™.” VRML 99 Conference, Paderborn, Germany, 1999.

“Building OpenWorlds.” VRML 98 Conference, Monterey CA, 1998.

“Immersive Control of Human Interaction with Multi-Variate Data.” NASA Technology Commercialization Review, Palisades, NY, 1998.

“Multi-pass Pipeline Rendering: Realism for Dynamic Environments.” Symposium on Interactive 3-D Graphics, Providence RI, 1997.

“Multi-pass Pipeline Rendering: Interactive Refractions, Reflections, and Shadows.” SIGGRAPH Technical Sketches, Orlando FL, 1994.

Contracts

Project Manager – “Transition To Teaching”, Sponsored Research Agency: Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII), U.S. Dept. of Education, 2007-2008.

Project Manager – “Virtual Robot Simulator.” for project "PIRE: Humanoids - Universally Accessible Infrastructures to Advance Capabilities.", PI: Dr. Paul Oh, Drexel Mechanical Engineering NSF-PIRE: Partnerships for International Education and Research, 2007-2011.

Principal Investigator - “ADMS Graphical User Interface Design”, Sponsored Research Agency: Environmental Tectonics Corp., 2007

– led 10-person effort to redesign next-generation user interface for commercial disaster management simulator.

Co-Author and Prime Sub-contractor – “3D Components for Virtual Environments”

Vcom3D, Inc. OSD Phase II SBIR, 2002-2004.

Co-Author and Prime Sub-contractor – “On-Demand, Controller-based Simulation for Human-Automation Training.” Vcom3D, Inc. NASA Phase I SBIR, 2002-2003.

Principal Investigator - “Increased Human Visual Cognition Through Interactive Hardware Rendering.” Phase I. Contractor: NASA JSC, 1996-1998.

POC, Technical Lead - “Design Evaluation for Personnel, Training and Human Factors (DEPTH) Phase V Support.” Contractor: Hughes Missile Systems Company, 1996-1997.

Principal Investigator - “Immersive Control of Human Interaction with Multi-Variate Data.”, Phase I & II. Contractor: NASA MSFC, 1995-1998.

Principal Investigator - “IGDS/Jack Bi-directional Translator.” Subcontract with University of Pennsylvania. Contractor: US Air Force, 1993.

Principal Investigator - “IGES-Jack Translator.” Subcontract with University of Pennsylvania. Contractor: US Army, 1991-1992.

Publications

Paul J. Diefenbach. “Creating a Multi-Discipline Gaming Curriculum: Avoiding Mistakes, Missteps, and Growing Pains.” Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2008, (Singapore, December 2008).

Paul Diefenbach, Daniel Letarte, Christopher Redmann, Robert Ellenberg, Paul Oh . “Extending Animator Tool Sets for Humanoid Robotics” 5th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence ( URAI 2008), (Seoul, Korea, November 2008).

Paul J. Diefenbach. “Teaching Soft-skills: Digital Game Development in a Multi-Discipline Environment” Computer Graphics Forum Journal, Volume 27(2), (Crete, Greece, April 2008).

Lauren E. Mandilian, Paul J. Diefenbach, Youngmoo Kim. “Information overload: a collaborative dance performance.” Proceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop on Semantic Ambient Media Experiences, SAME 2008, (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, October 31, 2008). 2008, pp. 57-60.

Paul J. Diefenbach, William Muto, Sara Colucci, Chester Cunanan, Justin Dobies, James Grow, Matthew Smith, “Planet Diggum: Multi-point Touch and Gesture Control of Gaming Environments,” Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS'2007), (San Francisco, CA, September 2007).

Paul J. Diefenbach, “OpenWorlds™: Diary of a RoundUP Presenter,” Computer Graphics,Vo. 34, No. 2, p. 48, May 2000.

Paul J. Diefenbach and Prakash Mahesh, “VRML Virtues,” Silicon Graphics World,Vo. 8, No. 11, p. 16, November 1998.

Paul J. Diefenbach, “Space station simulations ‘fly’ on VRML model”, Silicon Graphics World, Vol. 8, No. 7, pp. 20, 27, July 1998.

Paul J. Diefenbach and Prakash Mahesh, “Building OpenWorlds,” Proceedings VRML 98, 1998.

Paul J. Diefenbach and Norman I. Badler, "Multi-pass Pipeline Rendering: Realism for Dynamic Environments," 1997 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics Proceedings, 1997.

Paul J. Diefenbach, "Multi-pass Pipeline Rendering: Interaction and Realism through Hardware Provisions," Ph.D. Thesis, tech report MS-CIS-96-26 , 1996.

Paul J. Diefenbach and Norman I. Badler, "Pipeline Rendering: Interactive Refractions, Reflections, and Shadows," Displays (special issue on Interactive Computer Graphics) , 15(3):173-180, 1994.

Commercial Product Launches

2008 ADMS™ by Vcom3D Inc. Emergency management training application. Consultant/architect for version 4 development.

2006 Vcommunicator® Studio by Vcom3D Inc. Virtual character product. Lead simulation engine designer.

2003 Sign Smith Studio by Vcom3D Inc. Sign language products. Lead simulation engine designer.

2001 ShadowChaser3D™ by ShadowChaser Inc. Instructional Golf Training application of golf pro David Leadbetter. Features OpenWorlds™ simulation engine.

2000 Tpresence Distributed Web Engine. Features OpenWorlds™ simulation engine.

1998 Schmoozer™ by Mitsubishi Electric. Multi-user virtual space featuring OpenWorlds™ simulation engine.

1997-2001 OpenWorlds™ libraries, loaders, and simulation engine.