University of Pennsylvania

The University's Digital Media Design Programme is specially designed to educate a new generation of people to work in computer graphics; people who, through a combined education in both disciplines, could collaborate effectively with technologists and artists. In addition, through their communications courses, DMD students delve into what the audience of these future collaborations might perceive. DMD has clearly grown significantly since its conception. Now celebrating 10 years, it has 62 current students and over 40 alumni members.

This programme was established in response to what the University perceived as a growing rift within the computer graphics and animation industry.
The field had traditionally employed two kinds of people: artists and technologists. Each profession had its own vocabulary and perspective, and each had very different educational backgrounds.

The various courses offered are:

CSE 110 -

• Intro To Computer Programming
• CSE 110 is a "Java lite' course that covers the fundamentals of object-oriented programming such as objects, classes, state, methods, loops, arrays, inheritance, and recursion using the Java programming language.

CSE 120 -

• Programming Languages and Techniques I & Lab
• CSE 120/130 covers the core concepts of programming and computing using Java.
• Includes top down program design, testing and debugging, interactive programming, iteration, recursion, data structures, and inheritance.

CSE 121 -

• Programming Languages and Techniques II & Lab
• Training is provided on how to specify programs, how to prove that they are correct and have the expected performance, and how to organize information in data structures and process it with efficient algorithms.
• Software engineering methods are also introduced, including modular design, generic and reusable code, and design patterns.
• Java programming is used throughout to illustrate and exercise the course concepts.

CSE 240 -

• Introduction to Computer Architecture
• Training is given on how to program. This bottom-up course begins with transistors and simple computer hardware structures, continues with low-level programming using primitive machine instructions, and finishes with an introduction to the C programming language.
• This course is a broad introduction to all aspects of computer systems architecture and serves as the foundation for subsequent computer systems courses, such as Digital Systems Organization and Design (CSE 371), Computer Operating Systems (CSE 380), and Compilers and Interpreters (CSE 341).

CSE 260 -

• Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science
• This course provides an introduction to Boolean logic, combinatorics, graph theory and probability theory as well as a rigorous grounding in writing and reading mathematical proofs.

CSE 262 -

• Automata, Computability and Complexity
• The course provides an introduction to the theory of computation.
• The treatment is mathematical, but the point of view is that of Computer Science. Roughly speaking, the theory of computation consists of three overlapping subareas: (1) formal languages and automata; (2) computability and recursive function theory; (3) complexity theory.
• The course will focus mostly on (1) and (2). The topics covered include finite automata and regular languages, context-free languages, Turing machines, Church's Thesis, undecidability, reducibility and completeness, time complexity and NP completeness.

CSE 320 -

• Introduction to Algorithms
• Problem solving.
• Constructs for representing and manipulating information. Recurrence relations.
• Asymptotic notation for analysis of algorithms.
• Advanced data structures such as balanced trees.
• Graph algorithms: searching, spanning, shortest paths, network flows.
• Algorithm design paradigms: greedy, divide-and-conquer, backtracking, dynamic programming, and randomization. Introduction to computational complexity, NP-completeness, approximation algorithms.

CSE 277 -

• Intro To Computer Graphics Techniques
• This course is focused on programming the essential geometric and mathematical concepts underlying modern computer graphics.
• Using primarily 2D implementations, it covers fundamental topics graphical user interface design, computational geometry, graphics algorithms, and image processing.

CSE 460 -

• Computer Graphics
• This course is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to computer graphics leading to the ability to understand contemporary terminology, progress, issues, and trends.
• Topics which will be covered include geometric transformations, computer graphics software, three-dimensional model representations, visible surface algorithms, image synthesis, ray tracing, radiosity, anti-aliasing, animation techniques, and virtual environments.
• The interdisciplinary nature of computer graphics is emphasized in the wide variety of examples and applications presented with both image and animated materials. Course material is structured to meet the needs of both designers and users of interactive computer graphics systems.

CSE 462 -

• Computer Animation
• This course covers core subject matter common to the fields of robotics, character animation and embodied intelligent agents.
• The intent of the course is to provide the student with a solid technical foundation for developing, animating and controlling articulated systems used in interactive computer games, virtual reality simulations and high-end animation applications.
• The course balances theory with practice by "looking under the hood" of current animation systems and authoring tools and exams the technologies and techniques used from both a computer science and engineering perspective.
• Topics covered include: geometric coordinate systems and transformations; quaternions; parametric curves and surfaces; forward and inverse kinematics; dynamic systems and control; computer simulation; keyframe, motion capture and procedural animation; behavior-based animation and control; facial animation; smart characters and intelligent agents.

EAS 499 -

• Senior Project.