Bugs in the Space Program
(Lecturer: Steve Easterbrook)

One of the greatest engineering challenges of our lifetime is the development of spacecraft to explore the solar system. Such spacecraft are increasingly complex, and need reliable software to control them. Unfortunately, building reliable software is very hard. In fact, problems with software have been the root cause of many spectacular failures in the space program in the past decade.

In this talk, a number of such failures were examined, including the European Space Agency's Ariane-5 rocket, NASA's Mars probes and the International Space Station. There was also a brief discussion about the Space Shuttle's flight software, which has had its own share of problems, even though they have not led to significant mission failures. Each of these case studies makes a fascinating story. However, more importantly, the class was able to draw all sorts of lessons from them about why software goes wrong, and debate the possibility of ever building completely reliable software for spacecraft.

Machine Learning for Computer Graphics
(Lecturer: Aaron Hertzmann)

Sophisticated computer graphics applications require complex models of appearance, human motion, natural phenomena and even artistic style. Such models are often difficult or impossible to design by hand. Recent research in machine learning demonstrates that, instead, we can "learn" a dynamical and/or appearance model from captured data, and then use the model to synthesize plausible new data. For example, we can capture the motions of a human actor, and then generate new motions as they might be performed by that actor.

In this fascinating talk, Professor Hertzmann described powerful new tools for learning and synthesizing styles of human motion, textures, terrains, painting and drawing.

Uncomputability - What Computers Can't Do
(Lecturer: Vassos Hadzilacos)

Are there inherent limits to what computers can do? Are there computational tasks that a computer cannot carry out, no matter how powerful a computer we have, how long we are willing to wait, and how brilliant programmers we are?

The class explored this mathematically and philosophically important question. Our exploration took students through some deep (but very accessible) issues in set theory, and along the way encountered some intriguing figures in the history of science and mathematics – Galileo, Cantor and Turing.

Psychorealism in Computer Animation
(Lecturer: Karan Singh)

Computer graphics is rapidly striding toward a state where the real and virtual in an animation blend indistinguishably together. The 2004 Oscar-winning computer animated short film "Ryan" goes beyond merely recreating reality -- it uses innovative new techniques to reveal the inner state of the characters. Director Chris Landreth refers to this pursuit as "psychorealism".

In this lecture, students learned about the techniques developed at UofT for the film, and how they can be used not only for artistic but also scientific applications. Professor Singh also shared fascinating behind-the-scenes stories about the process of creating this film.