Jyh-Ming Lien

Department of Computer Science
George Mason University, MSN 4A5
Fairfax, VA  22030
USA

webpage: http://cs.gmu.edu/~jmlien
email: jmlien@gmu.edu
phone: (703) 993-9546
office: Engineering Building 4442

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Texas A&M University, USA, December 2006
  Ph.D. Topic: Approximation Convex Decomposition And Its Applications
  Thesis advisor: Nancy M. Amato
• B.S. in Computer Science, National Cheng-Chi University, Taiwan, June 1999

Research Interests

• Computational geometry, robotics, GIS, computer graphics and animation

Professional Experience

• Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Sciences, George Mason University, Fairfax, August 2007-present
• Term Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Sciences, George Mason University, Fairfax, January 2007-August 2007
• Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, July 2006-January 2007. Advisor: Ruzena Bajcsy
• Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M University, Fall 1999-Summer 2006. Advisor: Nancy M. Amato
• Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M University, Fall 2000
• Undergraduate Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, National Cheng-Chi University, Taiwan, Spring 1998-Summer 1999. Undergraduate research advisor: Tsai-Yen Li

Publications in Refereed Journals

1. Jyh-Ming Lien, Fernando Camelli, David Wong, Yanyan Lu and Benjamin McWhorter, "Creating Building Ground Plans via Robust K-way Union", the Visual Computer, in press, 2011.
2. Fernando Camelli, Jyh-Ming Lien, Dayong Shen, David W. Wong, Matthew Rice, Rainald Löhner and Chaowei Yang, "Generating Seamless Surfaces for Transport and Dispersion Modeling in GIS", Geoinformatica, August 2011, DOI: 10.1007/s10707-011-0138-3.
3. Yanyan Lu, Evan Behar, Stephen Donnelly, Jyh-Ming Lien, Fernando Camelli, and David Wong, "Fast and Robust Generation of City-Scale Seamless 3D Urban Models", Computer-Aided Design, in press, 2011. Also appear in Proc. SIAM Conference on Geometric and Physical Modeling (GD/SPM), Orlando, Florida, Oct. 2011. Nominated for best paper award (6/72 papers)
4. Jyh-Ming Lien, Gregorij Kurillo, and Ruzena Bajcsy, "Multi-Camera Tele-immersion System with Real-Time Model Driven Data Compression", the Visual Computer, Springer, 26(1), 2010, pp. 3-15.
5. Jyh-Ming Lien, "Covering Minkowski Sum Boundary Using Points with Applications", Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD), 25(8), 2008, pp. 652-666.
6. Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy Amato, "Approximate Convex Decomposition of Polyhedra And Its Applications", Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD), 25(7), 2008, pp. 503-522 .
7. Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "Approximate Convex Decomposition for Polygons", Computational Geometry: Theory & Applications, pp. 100-123. Invited submission to special issue featuring selected papers from the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry 2004.
8. Jyh-Ming Lien, Marco Morales, and Nancy M. Amato. "Neuron PRM: A Framework for Constructing Cortical Networks", Neurocomputing, Volume 52-54, No. 28, June 2003, pp. 191-197.

Publications in Refereed Conferences

1. Fernando Camelli, Rainald Löhner, Jyh-Ming Lien and David Wong, "Comparing Four Different CFD Approaches to Simulate Transport and Dispersion in Oklahoma City", 17th Conference on Air Pollution Meteorology with the A&WMA, Part of the 92nd AMS Annual Meeting, Louisiana, New Orleans, Jan. 2012.
2. Yanyan Lu and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Finding Critical Changes in Dynamic Configuration Spaces", in Proc. of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2011), San Francisco, CA, Sep. 2011.
3. Evan Behar and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Fast and Robust 2D Minkowski Sum Using Reduced Convolution", in Proc. of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2011), San Francisco, CA, Sep. 2011.
4. Jyh-Ming Lien, Fernando Camelli, and David Wong, "Fast and Robust Generation of City Scale Urban Ground Plan", In Proc. Computer Graphics International (CGI), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, June 2011. Also invited to republish in the Visual Computer.
5. Evan Behar and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Dynamic Minkowski Sum of Convex Shapes", In Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom. (ICRA), Shanghai, China, May 2011.
6. Christopher Vo and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Following a Large Unpredictable Group of Targets Among Obstacles", The Third International Conference on Motion in Games 2010, Zeist, Netherlands, November, 2010.
7. Joseph F. Harrison, Christopher Vo and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Scalable and Robust Shepherding via Deformable Shapes", The Third International Conference on Motion in Games 2010, Zeist, Netherlands, November, 2010.
8. Jyh-Ming Lien and Yanyan Lu, "Planning Motion in Point-Represented Contact Spaces Using Approximate Star-Shaped Decomposition", Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), St. Louis, Missouri, Oct. 2009.
9. Christopher Vo, Joseph F. Harrison and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Behavior-Based Motion Planning for Group Control ", Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), St. Louis, Missouri, Oct. 2009.
10. Jyh-Ming Lien and Yanyan Lu, "Planning Motion in Similar Environments", Proceedings of the Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS), Seattle, Washington, Jun. 2009.
11. Jyh-Ming Lien and Emlyn Pratt, "Interactive Planning for Shepherd Motion", Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium, Stanford University, CA, March 2009.
12. Jyh-Ming Lien, "A Simple Method for Computing Minkowski Sum Boundary in 3D Using Collision Detection", Proceedings of the Eighth International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), Guanajuato, Mexico, Dec. 2008.
13. Jyh-Ming Lien. "Hybrid Motion Planning Using Minkowski Sums", Proceedings of the Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS), Zurich, Switzerland. Jun. 2008.
14. Jyh-Ming Lien, Gregorij Kurillo, Ruzena Bajcsy. "Skeleton-Based Data Compression for Multi-Camera Tele-immersion System", Proceedings of the Advances in Visual Computing: Proceedings of the 3rd Intl. Symp. on Visual Computing (ISVC 2007), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4841, Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag, 2007, pp. 714-723.
15. Jyh-Ming Lien. "Point-Based Minkowski Sum Boundary", Proceedings of the Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications (Pacific Graphics), Maui, Hawaii, Nov. 2007, pp. 261-270. (Cover image) Invited for journal re-publication in a special issue of COMPUTER AIDED GEOMETRIC DESIGN (CAGD).
16. Jyh-Ming Lien and Ruzena Bajcsy. "Skeleton-Based Compression of 3-D Tele-Immersion Data", Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras (ICDSC), Vienna, Austria, Sep. 2007, pp. 347-354.
17. Jyh-Ming Lien. "Approximate Star-Shaped Decomposition of Point Set Data", Proceedings of the IEEE/Eurographics Symposium on Point Based Graphics (PBG), Prague, Czech Republic, Sep. 2007.
18. Samuel Rodriguez, Jyh-Ming Lien, and Nancy Amato. "A Framework for Planning Motion in Environments with Moving Obstacles", Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), San Diego, Oct 2007, pp. 3309-3314.
19. Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "Approximate Convex Decomposition of Polyhedra", Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Solid and Physical Modeling (SPM), Beijing, China, June 2007, pp. 121 131. (Back cover image) Invited for journal re-publication in a special issue of COMPUTER AIDED GEOMETRIC DESIGN (CAGD).
20. Dawen Xie, Marco A. Morales A., Roger Pearce, Shawna Thomas, Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "Incremental Map Generation (IMG)", Proceedings of the Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), New York City, July, 2006.
21. Jyh-Ming Lien, John Keyser, and Nancy M. Amato. "Simultaneous Shape Decomposition and Skeletonization", Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Solid and Physical Modeling (SPM), Cardiff, UK, June 2006, pp. 219-228.
22. Aimée Vargas, Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "VIZMO++: a Visualization, Authoring, and Educational Tool for Motion Planning", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Orlando, May 2006, pp. 727-732.
23. Samuel Rodriguez, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato. "Planning Motion in Completely Deformable Environments", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Orlando, May 2006, pp. 2466-2471.
24. Samuel Rodriguez, Xinyu Tang, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato. "An Obstacle-based Rapidly-exploring random tree (OBRRT)", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Orlando, May 2006, pp. 895-900.
25. Jyh-Ming Lien, Samuel Rodriguez, Jean-Phillipe Malric and Nancy M. Amato. "Shepherding Behaviors with Multiple Shepherds", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Barcelona, Spain, April 2005, pp. 3413-3418.
26. O. Burchan Bayazit, Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "Swarming Behavior Using Probabilistic Roadmap Techniques", Proceedings of the International Workshop Swarm Robotics (SAB'04), Santa Monica, July 2004, pp. 112-125. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Jan 2005, 3342/2005:112-125.
27. Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "Approximate Convex Decomposition for Polygons", Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG'04), New York, June 2004, pp. 17-26.
28. Jyh-Ming Lien, O. Burchan Bayazit, Ross T. Sowell, Samuel Rodriguez, and Nancy M. Amato. "Shepherding Behaviors", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), New Orleans, April 2004, pp. 4159-4164.
29. Jyh-Ming Lien, Shawna L. Thomas, and Nancy M. Amato. "A general framework for sampling on the medial axis of the free space", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Taipei, Taiwan, September 2003, pp. 4439-444.
30. O. Burchan  Bayazit, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato, "Better Group Behaviors in Complex Environments with Global Roadmaps", Proceedings of the 2002 Artificial Life (ALIFE): The 8th International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living System.s, Sydney, Australia, December 2002, pp. 362-370.
31. O. Burchan  Bayazit, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato, "Better Group Behaviors using Rule-Based Roadmaps", Proceedings of the Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), Nice, France, December 2002, pp. 95-111.
32. O. Burchan  Bayazit, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato, "Roadmap-Based Flocking for Complex Environments", Proceedings of the 2002 Pacific Graphics (PG), Beijing, China, October 2002, pp. 104-113.
33. O. Burchan  Bayazit, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato, "Probabilistic Roadmap Motion Planning for Deformable Objects", Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Washington DC, May 2002, pp. 2126-2133.
34. Tsai-Yen Li, Jyh-Ming Lien, Shih-Yen Chiu, and Tzong-Hann Yu, "Automatically Generating Virtual Guided Tours", Proceedings of the Computer Animation '99 Conference (CA'99), Geneva, Switzerland, May 1999, pp. 99-106.

Lightly Refereed Publications, Posters and Tech. Reports

1. Stephen Donnelly, Yanyan Lu, Evan Behar and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Estimating Penetration Depth of Convex Polyghedra Using Dynamic Minkowski Sum", Contributed Presentation Abstract, SIAM Conference on Geometric and Physical Modeling (GD/SPM11), Orlando, Florida, Oct. 2011.
2. Christopher Vo and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Reusable Sampling-Based Techniques for Manipulation via Pushing", the Workshop on Progress and Open Problems in Motion Planning, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2011), San Francisco, CA, Sep. 2011.
3. Evan Behar and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Extracting the Minkowski Sum Boundary from the Reduced Convolution", 20th Annual Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry, Stony Brook, NY, Oct 2010.
4. Christopher Vo and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Visibility-Based Strategies for Searching and Tracking Unpredictable Coherent Targets Among Known Obstacles", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2010) Workshop: Search and Pursuit/Evasion in the Physical World: Efficiency, Scalability, and Guarantees, Anchorage, AK, May 2010.
5. Christopher Vo and Jyh-Ming Lien, "Following Multiple Unpredictable Coherent Targets Among Obstacles", Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (i3D), Poster, Washington DC February, 2010.
6. Keith Sullivan and Christopher Vo and Sean Luke and Jyh-Ming Lien, "RoboPatriots: George Mason University 2010 RoboCup Team", Proceedings of 2010 RoboCup Workshop, 2010.
7. Jyh-Ming Lien. "Minkowski Sums of Rotating Convex Polyhedra", Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG), College Park, Maryland. Video Abstract, Jun. 2008, pp. 228-229. Video Abstract.
8. S. Rodriguez, R. Salazar, N. M. Amato, O. B. Bayazit, and J.-M. Lien. "Roadmap-Based Group Behaviors", Proceedings of the RSS Workshop on Algorithmic Equivalences Between Biological and Robotic Swarms, Atlanta, June 2007.
9. Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "Polyhedron Realization using Convex Hull Projection", Technical Report TR05-016, Parasol Lab., Dept. of Computer Science, December 2005.
10. Jyh-Ming Lien, Samuel Rodriguez, Xinyu Tang, John Maffei, Daniel Corlette, Arnaud Masciotra, and Nancy M. Amato. "Composable Group Behaviors", Technical Report TR05-006, Parasol Lab., Dept. of Computer Science, September 2005.
11. Aimée Vargas, Jyh-Ming Lien, Marco A. Morales A., Samuel Rodriguez, and Nancy M. Amato. "User-Guided Path Planning", Technical Report TR05-011, Parasol Lab., Dept. of Computer Science, September 2005.
12. Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "Approximate Convex Decomposition", Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG'04), New York, June 2004, pp. 457-458. Video Abstract.
13. Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato. "Approximate Convex Decomposition", Technical Report TR03-001, Parasol Lab., Dept. of Computer Science, January 2003.
14. Jyh-Charn Liu, M. Freckleton, Jyh-Ming Lien, and Di Wu. "On the Portable Remote Diagnostic Information and Telemedicine System (PoRDITS)", Proceedings of the 13th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS'00), Houston, June 2000, pp. 33-35.

Software

• Two Dimensional Minkowski sum
• Three Dimensional Minkowski sum
• Two Dimensional Approximate Convex Decomposition

Grants

• "VASTO - Evolutionary Agent System for Transportation Outlook", U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, University of Arizona and George Mason University, PIs: Y-C Chiu (U. of Arizona), J-M Lien (GMU) $1,224,169 ($384,666 GMU) 06/01/2011 - 01/01/2014
• Seed Grant Research Award, $18K, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, September 2010 - August 2011
• "DC: Small: Collaborative Research: Shape Representation of Large Geometries via Convex Approximation" (IIS-096053), The National Science Foundation, PIs: J.-M. Lien, N. Amato (Texas A&M U.), $500,000 ($300,000 GMU), 09/01/09 - 08/31/12. With REU supplement to GMU: $16,000.
• Seed Grant Research Award, $20K, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, February 2008 - December 2009
• Undergraduate-Faculty Apprenticeship Award, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, Fall 2007
• Computing Research Association (CRA) Travel Grant, CRA Academic Careers Workshop, Washington, DC, February 2006
• NSF Travel Grant, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), September 2003, Taipei, Taiwan

Honors and Awards

• Graduate Teaching Academy (GTA) fellow, GTA certificate of completion, Texas A&M University, December 2005
• Student Research Week, Second Place in Engineering (University-wide annual award recognizing research excellence), Texas A&M University, 2004

Courses Taught

• CS262 Introduction to Low-level Programming (Fall 2011)
• CS311 Computer Science III (Fall 2009)
• CS426 Game Programming II (Spring 2011)
• CS483 Analysis of Algorithms (Spring 2009, Spring 2008, Spring 2007)
• CS499 Geometric Computing (Fall 2010)
• CS583 Analysis of Algorithms I (Spring 2009)
• CS633 Computational Geometry (Fall 2009, Fall 2008, Fall 2007)
• CS795 Geometric Processing (Spring 2011)

Student Research Mentoring

• Mr. Evan Behar, CS Ph.D, Spring 2010-present
  • Thesis topic: Dynamic Minkowski Sums
• Mr. Christopher Vo, CS Ph.D, Spring 2009-present
  • Thesis topic: Manipulation Planning Under Uncertainty
• Ms. Yanyan Lu, CS Ph.D, Fall 2007-present
  • Thesis topic: Reusable Motion Planning
• Mr. Stephen Donnelly, CS M.S., Fall 2010-present
• Mr. Michael Shal, CS M.S., Spring 2007
• Mr. Tim Ludwinski, CS major, Spring, 2011, Fall 2011
• Mr. Mark Henrickson-Mattson, CS major, Summer REU, 2011
• Mr. Ben McWhorter, CS major, Spring 2011-Summer REU, 2011
• Mr. Stephen Donnelly, CS major, Fall 2008-Summer 2010
• Ms. Maryam Jeiran, CS major, Summer 2010
• Mr. Emlyn Pratt, CS major, Fall 2007-Spring 2009

Students Whose Ph.D. Committee I am on

• Ms. Nada Basit, Computer Science, Advisor: Harry Wechsler
• Mr. Raheem Rufai, Computer Science, Advisor: Dana Richards
• Dr. Dan Fleck, Computer Science, Advisor: Zoran Duric
• Ms. Jing Li, Geoinformation Science, Advisor: David Wong
• Dr. Deepak Ropireddy, Molecular Neuroscience, Advisor: Giorgio Ascoli

Professional Activities

• Program Committee member, for IEEE Shape Modeling International 2012, Geometric Modeling and Processing (GMP) 2012, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2012, 2011, 2010, ACM Computing Frontiers 2011, Robotics: Science and Systems Confrence (RSS) 2011, 2010, 2008, 2007, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2011, 2007, SIAM/ACM Joint Conference on Geometric and Physical Modeling (CGPM) 2011, 2010, 2009, Conference on Technologies and Applications of Artificial Intelligence (TAAI) 2011, 2010, ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG) Video and Multimedia Presentation Program Committee 2011, International Workshop on Security in Cloud Computing (SCC) 2009,
• Publicity co-chair, for ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers 2010
• Conference session chairs, for IEEE/RSJ IROS 2009, 2011, IEEE ICRA 2011
• Steering Committee member, for IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion 2008-present
• Frequent Reviewer (selected), for journals (IEEE Transactions on Robotics, International Journal of Robotics Research, ACM Transactions on Graphics, Algorithmica,Information Processing Letters, Computer-Aided Design, IEEE Transaction on Visualization and Graphics, Autonomous Robots, Computer-Aided Geometric Design), and conferences (SIGGRAPH, International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), IEEE Visualization, Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC), etc.).
• NSF panel, CISE AF 2010
• Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), proposal review, 2010
• Thesis examination, National University of Singapore, 2011
• Coach, ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) for the Department of Computer Science, George Mason University, 2008-present
• Judge, Engineering Senior Design Day, the Catholic University of America, May 2009
• Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Robotics and Automation Society, 2002-present
• Member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Member, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
• Member, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)