technology

Selected from the nation’s most promising students pursuing careers in animation and digital visual effects, two graduate Texas A&M visualization majors earned $15,000 scholarships from Sony Pictures Imageworks, a leading digital animation studio.

The iconic west facade of the Alamo is slowly wearing down. Researchers from the Center for Heritage Conservation at Texas A&M have found that the base of a decorative column flanking the Alamo’s main entrance has lost from 5 to 7 centimeters of its limestone surface since 1960.

Texas A&M researchers recently developed a new technique that facilitates the simulation and evaluation of daylight effects within a digitally rendered architectural model, significantly reducing the time and skills the process once required.

Efforts to conserve the Alamo, Texas’ historic shrine to liberty, will be presented by speakers from a wide variety of disciplines at the CHC's 16th annual Historic Preservation Symposium, scheduled Feb. 20 – 21, 2015 at the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M campus.

Refinements improving the experience of visually impaired people using iPads as reading devices were developed by Francis Quek, Texas A&M professor of visualization, and Yasmine N. El-Glaly, assistant professor of computer science at Port Said University in Egypt.

Clint Brown ’78, director of software products at Esri, the world’s leading developer of geographic information system applications, will keynote Texas A&M’s GIS Day festivities 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18 in Memorial Student Center Room 2300E.

Visualization students created computer-animated objects with Houdini, the same software used to make blockbuster movies such as “Frozen,” at an Oct. 17-19, 2014 workshop hosted by Texas A&M’s Learning Interactive Visualization Experience Lab.

GIS Day, the worldwide salute to geospatial technology and its power to transform and enhance lives, is going to be extra “spatial” this year in Aggieland, where the Texas A&M celebration is expanding to encompass three event-packed days, Nov. 17–19.

Entrepreneurs from Changing Environments, a Boston company that develops “smart,” solar-powered public spaces that cater to mobile device users, provided the keynote address at the College of Architecture's Monday, Oct. 27 research symposium and led a workshop.

If an interdisciplinary team of Texas A&M faculty has its way, video game-based learning will become an integral part of education, enhancing critical thinking skills and learning outcomes for students at all levels.

Art history students are learning about Renaissance art this fall while playing a video game, “The ARTé Project,” a prototype educational game developed by Texas A&M’s new Learning Interactive Visualizations Experience lab to demonstrate a fun, alternative way to learn.

Elementary school children are performing fun tasks designed to stoke their interest in science, technology, engineering and math and perhaps place them on a technology-oriented career path as part of a study led by Francis Quek, professor of visualization.

Many futurists envision a world where computing isn’t limited to desktops and mobile devices but rather a ubiquitous function of everyday items — appliances, cars, coffee mugs, clothing, sprinkler systems — all networked into an “Internet of everything.”

Three animated films, each portraying a 30-second tale about a robot, were created this summer by graduate visualization students at Texas A&M with guidance on the latest digital techniques from artists at DreamWorks Animation.

As a leader of numerous projects undertaken in politically charged situations, Pliny Fisk, Texas A&M architecture professor emeritus, continues the legacy of 1960s progressive idealism, asserts Sarah Deyong, associate professor of architecture.