Saturday, February 17, 2024
Library SHAM Slide

ACM@UIowa welcomes students, faculty, and all members of the community to our annual UIowa Computing Conference! The theme for UICC 2024 is "Computing in Entertainment." On February 17th, join us at the AJB and the Main Library SHAM  auditorium for a deep exploration of how computer science and software engineering intersect with the entertainment industry. Please RSVP by February 14th 11:59pm CST!

Our esteemed speakers—Professor Tyler Bell from the UIowa ECE department, Jon Hathaway from Epic Games, and Doug Cole from Spotify—will share their unique research and industry perspectives. The event features exciting raffle prizes, including the grand prize of Apple AirPods Max. Additionally, don't miss our small career networking event, offering valuable networking opportunities with local businesses in tech.

Schedule

Morning Session
11:00 AM - 12:30 AMIntroductions + Keynote: Tyler BellLibrary SHAM
Midday Session
12:45 PM - 2:15 PMLunch/Mini Networking FairAJB Rotunda
Afternoon Session
2:30 PM - 3:30 PMTalk 2: Jon HathawayLibrary SHAM
3:30 PM - 3:45 PMBreak 
3:45 PM - 4:45 PMTalk 3: Douglas ColeLibrary SHAM
Closing Session
5:00 PM - 5:30 PMClosing Ceremony + PrizesLibrary SHAM
5:30 PM - 7:00 PMDinnerAJB Rotunda

Speakers

Tyler Bell

Tyler Bell

Professor, UIowa Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Tyler Bell is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Iowa and the Director of the Holo Reality Lab. He received his B.S. and M.S. from Iowa State University in Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction, respectively. His Ph.D. is in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University. Prof. Bell’s research lies at the intersection of the physical and virtual worlds where he conducts research in the areas of 3D video streaming and telepresence, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and human computer interaction (HCI). A major achievement of his work includes the development of innovative platforms for real-time, compressed 3D video streaming over standard wireless networks for immersive visualization on a diverse range of devices, including desktop and mobile devices, holographic displays, and VR/AR systems. In addition, Dr. Bell’s research explores the practical applications of artificial intelligence (AI), employing AI to devise novel methods of 3D data compression and to enable realistic simulations with virtual human avatars. In this talk, Dr. Bell will introduce his lab’s research in achieving 3D video streaming for telepresence and entertainment. He will also introduce how 3D imaging is being utilized to improve navigation capabilities for people with low vision.

Jon Hathaway

Jon Hathaway

Senior Producer, Epic Games

Jon Hathaway (University of Iowa class of 2009) has spent the last decade building video games for a living. Working on titles like Halo, Destiny, and Fortnite, Jon has found a calling in creating order from chaos and navigating the organizational complexities of large scale interactive entertainment. Jon is currently working as a Senior Producer at Epic Games on Unreal Engine and is excited to talk about the path from Iowa to AAA, production as a career choice, and what it's like to work at huge game companies.

Douglas Cole

Douglas (Doug) Cole

Engineering Manager, Spotify

Douglas Cole is a Machine Learning Engineering Manager at Spotify and leads a team that builds content understanding and personalized recommendation models for podcasts and audiobooks. His team specializes in putting state of the art language and recommendation models into production systems that can scale to 500 million users and hundreds of millions of podcast episodes in near real time. Prior to Spotify, he worked on Amazon Alexa’s Natural Language Understanding team, starting as a computational linguist who implemented new functionality and engineered features for the classification models. Later he led a team that maintained the functionality of Alexa’s highest traffic domain. Douglas has a PhD and MA in linguistics from the University of Iowa, and a BA in Business from the University of Northern Iowa. His research interests are focused on using language modeling to solve a variety of business problems and implementing ML solutions at scale.

Map For UICC

map for uicc