Sebastian Fernandez

Address: 580 Rhodes Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
E-mail: spf@graphics.cornell.edu


Objective

To obtain a permanent position doing Java (J2SE/J2EE) software development in California.

Education

Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
Ph. D. in Computer Science
Graduated: August 2004

University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, California
B.S. In Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Graduated: May 1994

Computer Skills

Languages: Java (6 years experience), C/C++ (7 years experience), Python, TCL, Lisp, FORTRAN
OS: Linux, Windows, OS X
APIs: J2SE, J2EE, OpenGL
Software: CVS, Ant, Make
Web: JSP, Servlets, WebWork, EJB, JDBC, JavaScript, XML, HTML, CSS

Experience
Research Assistant
Program of Computer Graphics, Cornell University 		June 1994 – August 2003

Cooperated with a team of 5-10 developers in creating a distributed interactive software rendering system. The system consisted of 150K lines of code in several hundred Java source files. CVS was used for source code control. Applications running on the system would generate ray-traced images at interactive rates through the use of 64 dual-processor PCs.

Some of the tasks associated with this system were:

  • Parsing of geometric model files

  • Implementing a ray tracer with acceleration structures

  • Developing a message broadcast and subscription system for communication among the PCs

  • Use of synchronization primitives and libraries for efficient utilization of dual-processor PCs

  • Developing a web-based system for monitoring PC use in the cluster

  • Setting up automated nightly publication of source code documentation to an internal web site

  • Developing software to combine hardware and software rendering

  • Developing algorithms to provide over an order of magnitude reduction in the computational cost of individual shadow rays, used for computing accurate shadows within a ray tracer (work published in EGSR 2002)

  • Developing algorithms to provide over an order of magnitude reduction in the number of shadow rays needed by a ray tracer in complex scenes (work to be submitted for publication)

Teaching Assistant
Computer Science Department, Cornell University		 September 2000 – May 2003

Taught HTML, CSS, JavaScript and web page design to undergraduate students.

Taught basic principles of computer graphics to undergraduate students.

Earned Outstanding TA award May, 2002.

Developed software framework to be used by students in building a 3D modeler.

Developed a web-based course-management system using JSP and JDBC. The software aided in the administration of the undergraduate computer graphics course at Cornell University for three semesters. The system targeted features at three types of users:

  1. Professors

    • Professors could publish their slides by simply dropping them in a directory. These notes would then be automatically added to the course calendar.

    • Professors could inspect student grades directly on the web.

  1. Teaching Assistants

    • Teaching assistants could enter grades for each student directly on the web.

  1. Students

    • Students could form groups for programming projects.

    • Students would receive their grades directly by email as soon as all grades were entered by the teaching assistants and approved by the professor.


Refactored the above software system to make use of WebWork and EJB for better maintainability.

Intern
Hewlett Packard
June 1993 – December 1993
June 1992 – August 1992


Wrote UNIX scripts to automate the validation of diagnostic software.

Worked on the design and implementation of a hardware diagnostic system.

Publications

Sebastian Fernandez, Kavita Bala, and Donald P. Greenberg. Local Illumination Environments for Direct Lighting Acceleration. Thirteenth Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, pages 7–13, June 2002

Randima Fernando, Sebastian Fernandez, Kavita Bala, and Donald P. Greenberg. Adaptive Shadow Maps. SIGGRAPH 01 Conference Proceedings, pages 387-390, August 2001

Sebastian Fernandez, Kavita Bala, Moreno A. Piccolotto, and Donald P. Greenberg. Interactive Direct Lighting in Dynamic Scenes. Cornell University PCG Technical Report PCG-00-02, January 2000

Moreno A. Piccolotto, Sebastian Fernandez, Kavita Bala, M. Malone, and Donald P. Greenberg. A System for 3D Conceptual Modeling for Architectural Design. Cornell University PCG Technical Report PCG-00-03, January 2000

Bruce Walter, Gun Alppay, Eric P. F. Lafortune, Sebastian Fernandez, and Donald P. Greenberg. Fitting Virtual Lights for Non-Diffuse Walkthroughs. SIGGRAPH 97 Conference Proceedings, pages 45-48, August 1997

References

Available upon request


(PDF)