As an artist, engineer and scientist with diverse interdisciplinary interests, I am persistently drawn to the study of the interaction of light with material. My artistic pursuits include the cinematography of computer-generated animated characters for the motion picture industry with a focus on hair and skin. My scientific pursuits include topics in visual ecology, namely morphological hierarchies of scale in biological organisms, directional light scattering and structural color, spectral reflectance and color vision, and visual signaling in courtship display.

 

Research Pursuits

I took a sabbatical from the VFX film industry to study Computer Graphics at Cornell University, where I received my PhD in 2012.  I am currently a Postdoctoral Associate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University where I am developing and applying new tools to study plumage coloration and avian vision under the direction of Dr. Richard Prum.

Credit: Min H. Kim