Resume of Stephen L. Abrams
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 5-426A
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
(617) 253-7959 · Fax: (617) 253-8125
sabrams@mit.edu
Current Research Projects
Member of the research staff responsible for
coordinating the development, maintenance, and documentation of Praxiteles, an
interactive executive system for modeling and interrogating the
geometric and differential properties of free-form curves and
surfaces, stored internally in the canonical form of NURBS.
Conversion of the terminal-based version of Praxiteles to the
4Sight (NeWS-based) windowing system and then to the X Window System, using the OSF/Motif toolkit. Integration
of stand-alone capabilities such as blending surfaces, localization
and feature extraction, B-spline subdivision and joining, and robust
minimum distance calculation. Added support for trimmed patches,
Delaunay triangulation, advanced interrogation techniques, adjacent
patch continuity testing, and a
scripting capability. Author of User's Manual and extensive
technical reference documentation. Praxiteles is used by the U.S. Navy
and its subcontractors in the design and fabrication of the Seawolf
and NAS nuclear attack submarines.
Participant at the 2nd
European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital
Libraries, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, September 19-23, 1998. Attended
full-day tutorials on Multimedia
Information Retrieval and Metadata.
Creation of the position statement for one of the
panel
members.
Development and administration of an NSF-funded Invitational Workshop on
Distributed Information,
Computation, and Process Management for Scientific and Engineering
Environments, May 15-16, 1998, Hyatt Dulles,
Herndon, VA, including co-authoring the funding proposal and the final
report, production of the Workshop web site, budgeting, and
arranging for hotel facilities.
Responsible for administering the C4GVC digital library, a respository for documents in the fields of
CAD/CAM/CAE/CAGD, Graphics, and Visualization, based on a modified
version of the DIENST server.
For a NOAA-sponsored project investigating the ship squatting problem, development of a
general-purpose volume visualization package, using the marching cubes
algorithm. The program was first implemented in C under Unix using X/Motif and OpenGL, but then
substantially rewritten in the form of a WWW-based
information server comprised of several Perl scripts, dynamically
generated HTML pages, and custom graphics
utilities for producing and manipulating PostScript, GIF, and
VRML.
For a project on developing a Littoral Ocean Observing and
Predictive System (LOOPS), development of a CORBA-based executive system for
creating, validating, and executing workflows
constructed from distributed oceanographic data and software
resources. The system will be deployed on Java-enabled web browsers.
Usage of the Wide-Wide Web Consortium's
Libwww API to construct utilities
to POST Form-based requests to appropriate oceanographic servers.
Additionally, background investigation of
the use of relational and
object-oriented database systems for storage of scalar and multi-valued
measurement data defined over a volumetric domain, VRML for distributed
visualization, and DIS and HLA for distributed
simulation.
Member of team teaching 13.016,
Introduction to Geometric Modeling and Computation, covering
material on computer graphics
and OpenGL programming. Lecture on appropriate topics and provide
course notes, demonstration and example code, and contribute to definition
of problem sets, quizzes, and final project.
Other teaching includes a guest lecture for 13.472J,
Computational Geometry, on the principles of user
interface design.
Reviewer for the International Journal of Offshore and Polar
Engineering (IJOPE). Additionally, development of a LaTeX style
class to be evaluated by IJOPE for use in facilitating electronic submission.
As manager of the Ocean
Engineering Design Laboratory, responsible for the
hiring of a computer systems manager and supervision of his activities.
These include system management of a cluster of nine SGI workstations,
running IRIX, and four PC's, running Windows95 and NT.
All machines have Internet access and run a variety of networking
software, including email, ftp, NFS, NIS, telnet, and web browsers.
Maintaining a web site and server (HTTPd). Administration of user accounts,
file system backup and recovery, software installation and upgrades.
Prior to the hiring of the full-time manager, directly responsible for
all of these administrative tasks.
Education
- Master of
Liberal Arts (Concentration in Fine Arts), expected in 1999
- Harvard University,
Extension School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Art history course work in Venetian 16th century, Spanish
Baroque, British 18th century, French 19th century, photography,
modernism, and theory
- Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, 1981
- Boston University, College of
Liberal Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
- Honors Thesis: An Interactive Graphics Display System for
Modeling a Family of Orbits of the Three-Dimensional
Restricted Three-Body Problem
- Trustee Scholarship, four year, full tuition academic scholarship
- College Prize for Excellence in Mathematics
- Graduated summa cum laude, with Distinction
- Elected to Phi Beta Kappa
Research Interests
- Distributed information repositories
- Advanced tools for surface modeling, interrogation, and
inspection
- Visualization of volumetric geophysical phenomena
- Software engineering
Professional Experience
- Research Engineer, Department of Ocean
Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 1990
to present
- In addition to the work on current projects described above, recent work has included development of
OceanVis, a geophysical volumetric visualization system
written in C++ using the ViewKit
application framework toolkit and the OpenInventor 3D
graphics toolkit. The system uses spline fitting for data reduction,
interval arithmetic for robust processing, and a modified marching
cubes for fast viewing.
Other tasks include being trained in the operation of a Kawasaki J6 welding robot,
development of a serial I/O utility for an AdeptOne robot,
conversion of a legacy sonar visualization system to OpenGL, and
participation in planning a project in Solid
Freeform Fabrication.
Other work has included working with a geostatistical modeling package
to evaluate the quality of nautical charts for a project on ship
transit risk; consulting with Massachusetts Heavy Industries regarding
an appropriate hardware/software environment for a design office at the
newly revitalized Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts;
coarse-grained parallel processing, using PVM to implement
concurrent processing by a heterogeneous network of workstations;
preliminary development of a STEP (ISO 10303) Application Protocol
for Marine Propulsors; maintenance of a C++ legacy system for
three-dimensional medial axis transform; implementation of a family of
C++ classes to support a topological data structure
for boundary-representation modeling of complex n-dimensional
structures; development of PostScript library based on the SGI
Graphics Library; providing C, C++, graphics, and Unix consulting for
students; participate in writing of
funding proposals, progress reports, and journal articles; coordination of relations with end-users and funding
agencies; and preparation of materials for, and presentations to
sponsors and visitors.
- Founding Partner, Plain Vanilla Software, Melrose,
Massachusetts
- January 1992 to February 1994
- Conceptual and architectural design, prototyping, and
implementation of The Big Picture, a Windows-based utility
for efficient navigation about complex spreadsheets, published in
September 1993. The Big Picture uses the Windows DDE
facility to communicate with Excel and Lotus 1-2-3. Co-author of
business plan and User's Manual. Strategic
planning and presentations to prospective investors and publishers.
- Supervisor of Graphics Development, Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc.,
Houston, Pennsylvania, November 1981 to June 1990
- Supervisor of all development for the graphics and user interface
components of
ANSYS, an industry leading finite element analysis program.
Member of the Technical Coordination committee. Development and
documentation of the 2D and 3D graphics device driver specification and
manager of initiative for 3rd-party driver development. Provided training
and consultation to Customer Support, Distribution, and Quality
Assurance Departments. Coordination of relationships with graphics
hardware and software vendors and ANSYS distributors.
- Programmer/Analyst, Strategic Development, Burlington,
Massachusetts
- January 1981 to August 1981
- Development of an interactive report generator for a financial
management system, based on the query-by-example paradigm.
Technical Skills
- Current research using CORBA, Java, and Perl. Extensive programming
experience with C,
C++,
and Fortran.
Previous use of Actor, Ada,
Basic,
Icon, Pascal,
PL/I, Prolog,
Simula, S/370 Assembler, and VAX Macro Assembler.
- Expertise with SGI Graphics
Library (GL) and OpenGL and the X Window System, using the OSF/Motif toolkit. Currently
working with VRML, SGI OpenInventor,
and the SGI
ViewKit application framework toolkit.
- Experience
developing user interface and graphics applications for Microsoft Windows 3.1, using the
3.1 SDK.
- Installation and configuration of WWW server (HTTPd) and management of web site. Creating HTML with SGI
WebMagic.
- Familiarity with PostScript. Extensive
use of graphics packages and protocols, including Apollo GMR3D and
GPR; CalComp HCBS, HP HP-GL, AGP,
ISSP, and Starbase; IBM GDDM and
GraPHIGS; Intergraph Environ
V and Geometry Pipeline; Megatek Apprentice; Ramtek FLP, Raster
Technologies Onelib; QMS QUIC; SunCore and SunPHIGS; Tektronix 4010, 4100/4200, and
OnRamp.
- Document preparation using HTML, Interleaf TPS,
LaTeX, Runoff, Scribe, Word
for Windows.
- Operating system experience includes:
Apollo Aegis, Data General, AOS/VS,
DEC Ultrix and VMS, HP-UX, IBM
VM/CMS, Intergraph Clix,
Prime PRIMOS, SGI
IRIX, SunOS, Tektronix
UTek, Microsoft Windows 3.1,
and Windows95.
Professional Affiliations
Publications
Journal Articles
-
``Efficient and Reliable
Methods for Rounded Interval Arithmetic'' by S. L. Abrams, W. Cho,
C.-Y. Hu, T. Maekawa, N. M. Patrikalakis, E. C. Sherbrooke, and
X. Ye. Computer Aided Design, 30(8): 657-665, 1998.
-
``The Geometric Modeling and
Interrogation System Praxiteles'' by S. L. Abrams, L. Bardis,
C. Chryssostomidis, N. M. Patrikalakis, S. T. Tuohy, F.-E. Wolter,
and J. Zhou. Journal of Ship Production, 11(2):116-131, May 1995.
-
``Inspection and Feature
Extraction of Marine Propellers'' by R. A. Jinkerson,
S. L. Abrams, L. Bardis, C. Chryssostomidis, A. Clément,
N. M. Patrikalakis, and F.-E. Wolter. Journal of Ship Production,
9(2):88-106, May 1993.
Conference Papers
-
``Towards Robust Solid
Modeling: 1995 Progress Report'' by N. M. Patrikalakis,
S. L. Abrams, W. Cho, C.-Y. Hu, T. Maekawa, E. C. Sherbrooke, X. Ye,
and J. Zhou. Proceedings of the 1996 NSF Design and Manufacturing Grantees
Conference. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque,
January 1996. Dearborn: Society of Manufacturing Engineers, 1996,
pp. 155-156.
-
``Visualization and
Information Modeling of Propeller Surface Roughness'' by
M. A. Mosaad, X. Ye, S. L. Abrams, and N. M. Patrikalakis.
Proceedings of IMAM '95, The VII Congress of the International
Maritime Association of the Mediterranean, V. Androcec and
J. Lovric (eds.), Dubrovnik, Croatia, April 23-27, 1995. Zagreb,
Croatia: Brodarski Institute, Marine Research and Special
Technologies, pp. 673-684.
-
Marine Propulsor UoF of AP
226--Scope and Usage Scenarios by X. Ye, M. A. Mosaad,
S. L. Abrams, F. Fernandez-Gonzalez, and N. M. Patrikalakis. ISO
SC4/TC 184/WG3 N335, ISO/IPO Meeting, Greenville, South Carolina,
October 16-21, 1994.
Selected Technical Reports
-
Ontology and Metadata for the Poseidon Distributed Coastal Zone
Management System
by P. C. H.. Wariyapola, N. M. Patrikalakis, S. L. Abrams,
P. Elisseeff, and A. R. Robinson, H. Schmidt, K. Streitlien,
Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory
Memorandum 98-8, December 1998 (in preparation).
-
N. M. Patrikalakis, P. J. Fortier, Y. Ioannidis, C. N. Nikolaou,
A. R. Robinson, J. R. Rossignac, A. Vinacua, and S. L. Abrams,
Distributed Information and Computation in Scientific and
Engineering Environments Cambridge, MA: MIT, Department of Ocean
Engineering, Design Laboratory Memorandum 98-7, December 1998
(submitted for publication).
-
Formulation of a Model for Ship Transit Risk: Final Project
Report by H. L. Kite-Powell, N. M. Patrikalakis, D. Jin,
S. L. Abrams, J. Jebsen, V. Papakonstantinou, and S. Lin. Cambridge:
MIT, Sea Grant Report No. 98-7, 1998.
-
Approximation of Curves
and Surfaces with Non-Open Knot Vectors by S. L. Abrams and
N. M. Patrikalakis, Cambridge: MIT,
Department of Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory Memorandum 97-13,
July 1997 (in preparation).
-
Praxiteles User's Manual, Version 10.0 by S. L. Abrams and
N. M. Patrikalakis. Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering,
Design Laboratory Memorandum 97-15, October 1997.
Previous editions, 1991-1997.
-
Computer-Aided Inspection
of Sculptured Objects by M. O. Jastram,
S. L. Abrams, T. Maekawa, N. M. Patrikalakis, and
A. Clement. Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering,
Design Laboratory Memorandum 97-6, May 1997.
-
Design Laboratory Geometric Modeling Libraries Reference Manual --
Volume 6: insp, Inspection Library by S. L. Abrams,
M. O. Jastram, T. Maekawa, and N. M. Patrikalakis. Cambridge: MIT,
Department of Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory Memorandum 96-12,
September 1996.
-
Design Laboratory Geometric Modeling Libraries Reference Manual --
Volume 9: simp and lex, Simultaneous Polynomial Intersection Library
and Lexical Library by E. C. Sherbrooke, T. Maekawa, C.-Y. Hu,
W. Cho, J. Zhou, S. L. Abrams, and N. M. Patrikalakis. Cambridge:
MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory Memorandum
95-24, September 1995.
-
Marching Simplices: Interrogation of Implicit Surfaces in Irregular
Domains by J. Zhou, S. L. Abrams, C.-Y. Hu, S. T. Tuohy, and
N. M. Patrikalakis. Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering,
Design Laboratory Memorandum 95-7, June 1995.
-
Towards the Development of a STEP Application Protocol for Marine
Propulsors by X. Ye, M. A. Mosaad, S. L. Abrams,
F. Fernandez-Gonzalez, and N. M. Patrikalakis. Cambridge: MIT, Department of
Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory Memorandum 94-9, revised edition,
March 1995.
-
Design Laboratory Geometric Modeling Libraries Reference Manual --
Volume 6: iges, IGES Input/Output Library by S. L. Abrams.
Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering, Design
Laboratory Memorandum 94-10.6, January 1995.
-
Design Laboratory Geometric Modeling Libraries Reference Manual --
Introduction and Index by S. L. Abrams, S. T. Tuohy, and
N. M. Patrikalakis. Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering,
Design Laboratory Memorandum 94-10, November 1994.
-
Design Laboratory Geometric Modeling Libraries Reference Manual --
Volume 4: gen, General Purpose Utility Library by S. L. Abrams.
Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory
Memorandum 94-10.4, November 1994.
-
Design Laboratory Geometric Modeling Libraries Reference Manual --
Volume 5: glps, PostScript Compatibility Library by S. L. Abrams.
Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory
Memorandum 94-10.5, November 1994.
-
The Big Picture User's Manual by S. L. Abrams and
T. G. Chiginsky. Needham: Intex Solutions, September 1993.
-
Numerical Experiments in Surface Approximation with Degree
Reduction by N. M. Patrikalakis, S. L. Abrams, L. Bardis,
S. T. Tuohy, and F.-E. Wolter. Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean
Engineering, Design Laboratory Memorandum 93-5, November 1993.
-
The MIT Ocean Engineering Geometric Modeling Libraries by
S. L. Abrams and N. M. Patrikalakis. Cambridge: MIT, Department of
Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory Memorandum 92-10, September 1992.
-
Cell-Tuple Geometric Manifold Engineering System by C.-Y. Hu,
S. L. Abrams, L. Bardis, and N. M. Patrikalakis. Cambridge: MIT,
Department of Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory Memorandum
92-7, February 1992.
-
Geometric Modeling Research Overview at the MIT Ocean Engineering Design
Lab by S. L. Abrams, F.-E. Wolter, and N. M. Patrikalakis.
Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering, Design
Laboratory Memorandum 91-23, October 1991. Video tape, VHS, 45 minutes.
-
Unconstrained Localization Program User's Manual, Version 1 by
R. A. Jinkerson, S. L. Abrams, F.-E. Wolter, and N. M. Patrikalakis.
Cambridge: MIT, Department of Ocean Engineering, Design Laboratory
Memorandum, 91-8a, April 1991.
-
ANSYS 4.4A Device Driver Specification by S. L. Abrams.
Houston, Pennsylvania: Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc., 1990. Previous
editions, 1988 and 1989.
-
ANSYS 4.4A Graphics Supplement by S. L. Abrams. Houston,
Pennsylvania: Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc., 1990. Previous
editions, 1986-1989.
Stephen L. Abrams
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Ocean
Engineering
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 5-426A
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
(617) 253-7959 · Fax: (617) 253-8125
sabrams@mit.edu
URL: http://deslab.mit.edu/DesignLab/people/Abrams.html
Last modified: September 30, 1998