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Ever since he was a small child, Dan Huber ’02 (Morrisville, Pa.) has liked to figure out how things work and how to make them work better. By the time he began studying at Lafayette, he knew he wanted to make things work by using computers. And by the time he graduates, Huber hopes to have completed a computerized system that can help video directors capture their subjects at the best possible angles.
“The primary goal is to provide optimal viewing of the subjects in the scene,” says Huber, a computer science major and mathematics minor whose senior honors thesis is titled “Camera Placement for Occlusion-Free Viewing of a Two-Dimensional Scene.”
Huber chose the project for his thesis because he has been interested in computer graphics and animation since high school.
“I wanted to work on a challenging project in the field,” he says. “This problem has applications in computer graphics, such as camera or light placement in a virtual environment. I get excited about the project because I am the one specifying the problem, and I am the one who will try to solve it.”
Huber’s thesis adviser, Chun Wai Liew, assistant professor of computer science, says that while computer animation isn’t among his specialties, he has enjoyed learning more about the field and finding information to help Huber pursue his goals.
“He’s very bright and he’s very hard-working,” Liew says of Huber. “It’s been a challenge for me to find things to keep him interested.”
Huber also worked with Liew as an EXCEL Scholar during his sophomore year. The project involved developing a computational model of a snake’s jaw and demonstrating three-dimensional solid modeling techniques.
Huber says of Liew, “He guides me along to make sure the problem I am trying to solve is challenging, yet still has some attainable solutions.”
A graduate of Pennsbury High School, Huber is a member of the campus chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery and served as its president last year. This interim session between regular semesters, he took The London Theater, a course in England and Ireland. Huber is president of the volleyball club, plays on the club soccer team and various intramural teams, and is a disc jockey for WJRH, the campus radio station.