Research interests:

Interactive sound propagation : Realtime ray tracing : Visibility & rendering : Parallel & high performance computing

Education:

• PhD - Computer Science, May 2014
  "Interactive Sound Propagation for Massive Multi-user and Dynamic Virtual Environments"
  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• MS - Computer Science, 2012
  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• BS - Computer Science, 2004
  Technical Translator in German, 2004
  Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Projects:

• Invented and supervised creation of an Auditory Display Headset capable of creating audio landscapes from real world objects.
• Created libchb, a library to display images with Unicode characters and ANSI color codes in text mode terminals.
• Designed and developed CourseUp, a domain specific language for defining courses in a flexible and intuitive format.
• Implemented platform independent realtime ray tracer. Supports multiple hierarchy structures, split-selectors, shaders, and post-processing.
• Designed and implemented fast motion blur effects using sample reprojection. Generates similar results to stochastic motion blur at a fraction of the cost.
• Maintain and host my personal webpage. Custom code and design with database backend and light frontend.

Skills:

• Programming
  C, C++, Javascript, PHP, Bash, MIPS32, Verilog, and more
• APIs & Tools
  OpenGL, OpenMP, CUDA, SFML, SDL, Blender, Linux, Final Cut, Audacity, Apache, Git, GDB, MSVS, and more

Work experience:

• Volition - Champaign, IL, 2019-present
  Engine Programmer
  • Worked on upcoming Saints Row title
  • Designed new and exciting rendering and simulation features
• Kixor Technologies - Terre Haute, IN, 2018-present
  Founder
  • Designed Markdown/LaTeX based course description language
  • Invented and developed auditory display headset
• Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology - Terre Haute, IN, 2012-2019
  Associate Professor with Tenure
  • Taught 9 introductory and elective courses per year
  • Served as academic adviser to 25 CS/SE students per year
  • Managed over 100 student projects, including custom CPUs, realtime ray tracers, and automatic parallelization
  • Developed private git repository system with mass populate and pull capabilities
• Green Hills Software - Santa Barbara, CA, 2018 Summer
  Software Engineer
  • Investigated and documented advanced debugging techniques
  • Designed undergraduate course on robust and repeatable debugging processes
• Impulsonic (now Valve) - Carrboro, NC, 2016 Summer
  Senior Researcher
  • Developed proprietary acoustic algorithms for game middleware
  • Developed software with team in-office and remotely
• Dolby - San Francisco, CA, 2010 Summer
  Research Intern
  • Designed fast GPU and CPU based audio rendering system
  • Collaborated with senior researchers on large scale acoustic rendering systems
• University of North Carolina, Gamma group - Chapel Hill, NC, 2007-2012
  Research Assistant
  • Created interactive GPU based sound propagation system for early specular reflection and diffraction
  • Designed interactive acoustic simulation with diffuse, specular, and diffraction components
  • Developed diffraction tracing using real-time ray frustum tracer
• Baker Hill - Carmel, IN, 2004-2007
  Software Engineer
  • Served as lead designer on critical path projects for major loan origination products
  • Developed tools to automate refactoring of over 50,000 lines of code
  • Designed and implemented automatic build and deploy process across multiple platforms and devices

Teaching experience:

• Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology - Terre Haute, IN, 2012-2019
  Associate Professor with Tenure

  • Taught over 1000 students in small face-to-face classes (<25 students per class) at the top undergraduate engineering school in the US
  • Iteratively improved weak intro sequence, resulting in large improvements in student learning (from 3.2 to 4.3 out of 5)
  • Served on institute committees including Dean's task force on Creating a Culture of Integrity, Quality of Education, and International Programs
  • Courses taught:
    CSSE232 Computer Architecture - 21
    CSSE132 Introduction to Computer Systems - 14
    CSSE351 Computer Graphics - 6
    CSSE451 Advanced Computer Graphics - 4
    CSSE220 Object-Oriented Software Development - 1
    CSSE230 Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis - 1
    CSSE490 The Art and Science of Debugging - 1
    CSSE491 Independent study - 6 advised
    CSSE497 Senior thesis - 3 advised
  • Students appreciate my enthusiastic teaching style and I consistently receive high student evaluation ratings (4.7/5). Some students comments:
    “Micah is a very approachable and intelligent teacher, he genuinely wants his students to perform and makes the class's learning environment both interesting and fun through his personality.”
    “Micah was a very knowledgeable and interesting professor. His quirky mannerisms made it easy to pay attention in class, but his teaching was serious and easy to understand.”

• Connecting with Code - Terre Haute, IN, 2019 Summer
  Instructor

  • Taught beginner Scratch and Microbit coding
  • Created lessons suited for 6-8 year old students
  • Helped classroom of 10 students create fun games in half-day camp setting
• University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, NC, 2011 Fall
  Instructor - COMP575 Introduction to Computer Graphics
  • Full responsibility for course, including structure and lectures
  • Designed homeworks, quizzes, and programming assignments
  • Held office hours and graded assignments

Advising:

Undergraduate theses:

• Splashes and Water Wave Packets, Xingfang Yuan, 2018
  Winner of best thesis award
• Automatic Parallelism in Javascript, Rose Reatherford, 2016
• VR Cultural Heritage Sites, Si Faye Li, 2016

Independent studies

• Proprietary High Performance Shortest Euclidean Path, Charles Horton, Xingfang Yuan, 2017
• Bluetooth Driver for XBOX 360 Controllers, Josh Maurer, 2016
• VGA Driver for Spartan 6 FPGA, Jake Whiteley, 2016
• Web Based Acoustic Simulator, Xianbo 'Francis' Meng, 2015

Publications:

Journals and conferences

1. Micah Taylor. CourseUp: Human readable course language, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 2018
2. Micah Taylor, Sid Stamm, and Christine Taylor. The impact of changing homework frequency in a computer architecture course, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 2018
3. Micah Taylor and Francis Meng. Web-based geometric acoustic simulator, 23rd International ACM Conference on 3D Web Technology 2018
   10.1145/3208806.3208817
4. Micah Taylor, Anish Chandak, Qi Mo, Christian Lauterbach, Carl Schissler, and Dinesh Manocha. Guided Multiview Ray Tracing for Fast Auralization, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2012 (26%)
   10.1109/TVCG.2012.27
5. Lakulish Antani, Anish Chandak, Micah Taylor, Dinesh Manocha. Direct-to-Indirect Acoustic Radiance Transfer, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2012 (26%)
   10.1109/TVCG.2011.76
6. Lakulish Antani, Anish Chandak, Micah Taylor, Dinesh Manocha. Efficient finite-edge diffraction using conservative from-region visibility, Applied Acoustics 2011 (43%)
   10.1016/j.apacoust.2011.09.004
7. Anish Chandak, Lakulish Antani, Micah Taylor, Dinesh Manocha. Fast and Accurate Geometric Sound Propagation using Visibility Computations, International Symposium on Room Acoustics 2010
8. Micah Taylor, Anish Chandak, Lakulish Antani, Dinesh Manocha. RESound: Interactive Sound Rendering for Dynamic Virtual Environments, 17th International ACM Conference on Multimedia 2009 (16%)
   10.1145/1631272.1631311
9. Anish Chandak, Lakulish Antani, Micah Taylor, Dinesh Manocha. FastV: From-point Visibility Culling on Complex Models, 20th Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2009 (29%)
   10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01501.x
10. Micah Taylor, Anish Chandak, Zhimin Ren, Christian Lauterbach, Dinesh Manocha. Fast Edge-Diffraction for Sound Propagation in Complex Virtual Environments, EAA Symposium on Auralization 2009
11. Anish Chandak, Christian Lauterbach, Micah Taylor, Zhimin Ren, Dinesh Manocha. AD-Frustum: Adaptive Frustum Tracing for Interactive Sound Propagation, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2008 (26%)
    10.1109/TVCG.2008.111

Technical reports

1. Micah Taylor, Nicolas Tsingos, Dinesh Manocha. Rendering environmental voice reverberation for large-scale distributed virtual worlds, 2014
2. Lakulish Antani, Anish Chandak, Micah Taylor, Dinesh Manocha. Direct-to-Indirect Acoustic Radiance Transfer, 2010
3. Lakulish Antani, Anish Chandak, Micah Taylor, Dinesh Manocha. Fast Geometric Sound Propagation with Finite Edge Diffraction, 2010

Patents

1. US 8995675 Methods and systems for direct-to-indirect acoustic radiance transfer, Anish Chandak, Lakulish Antani, Micah Taylor, Dinesh Manocha
2. US 8958567 Method and system for split client-server reverberation processing, Nicolas Tsingos, Micah Taylor
3. US 8847695 Methods, systems, and computer readable media for fast geometric sound propagation using visibility computations, Anish Chandak, Lakulish Antani, Micah Taylor, Dinesh Manocha

Other

• Micah Taylor, Anish Chandak, Lakulish Antani, Dinesh Manocha, Interactive geometric sound propagation, EE Times, 2010
• Micah Taylor, Anish Chandak, Lakulish Antani, Dinesh Manocha, Interactive Geometric Sound Propagation and Rendering, Intel Academic Spotlight, 2010
• Micah Taylor, Anish Chandak, Zhimin Ren, Christian Lauterbach, Dinesh Manocha. Fast edge diffraction for sound propagation in complex virtual environments, Acoustical Society of America's North Carolina Chapter (Best presentation award), 2009