Immersive Technologies Seminar Series: Photorealistic visualization of nanoengineered materials

Join us on March 15th for a talk with Kenneth Chau about the computational methods explored by my team to produce photorealistic visualization of plasmonic structural colours and other nanoengineered materials for applications including coloration and daylighting control, in the Visualization and Emerging Media Studio (COM 107) at UBC Okanagan.

The vivid iridescence on butterfly wings and peacock feathers are examples of structural colours found in Nature. Unlike the coloration produced by pigment or dyes, structural coloration is caused by micro- or nano-structures whose features are sufficiently small to cause diffraction and interference of visible light. Recent research has demonstrated that it is possible to achieve structural colours with ultra-small form factors by relying on plasmonic interactions in nanofabricated metallic structures. Because metallic nanostructures can confine light to distances on the order of 10s of nanometers (below the diffraction limit), plasmonic structural coloration opens the door to achieving coloration with high spatial resolution and nanometer-scale pixels, a promising technology for high-resolution display and printing applications. In this talk, I will discuss computational methods explored by my team to produce photorealistic visualization of plasmonic structural colours and other nanoengineered materials for applications including coloration and daylighting control.

This talk is free and open to all, registration is not required.

The Immersive Technologies Seminar Series is a collaboration between CITech and the Media Studies program, and is organized by NSERC CREATE in Immersive Technologies (CITech), a highly multidisciplinary graduate training program at UBC focusing on skills development and collaborative research to design immersive solutions for various real-world applications. Find out more about CITech.

About the Researcher

Kenneth Chau is an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering at UBC Okanagan. His core research is in electromagnetic modelling and simulation, optical system design, wearable sensors for metabolic monitoring, and immersive visualization technologies.  His research and professional activities aim for real-world impact. Some outcomes of his program include a commercialized wearable metabolic sensor used by world-leading smart watch manufacturers and 100s of researchers at universities in every continent and an immersive visualization technology that is powering the metaverse experiences of professional sports teams in the NHL, MLB, and NBA. Many of Dr. Chau’s students have become societal leaders who are similarly ingrained with a desire to work on the most challenging problems and to develop solutions that meet the needs of end users.