astronomy

Jessica Hodgins

Jessica Hodgins is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Jessica Hodgins rather than just read about it. In short: Jessica K. Hodgins is an American roboticist and researcher who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and School of Computer Science.

Key takeaways

Jessica Hodgins belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jessica Hodgins to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jessica Hodgins from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jessica K. Hodgins is an American roboticist and researcher who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and School of Computer Science. She is currently VP, Strategic Projects & Research at the RAI Institute in Boston. She was elected the president of ACM SIGGRAPH in 2017. Until 2016, she was Vice President of Research at Disney Research and was the Director of the Disney Research labs in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. Hodgins also founded the Facebook AI Research lab in Pittsburgh next to Carnegie Mellon.

Early life and education Jessica Hodgins was born in Urbana, Illinois to Audrey and Frank Hodgins. Audrey was an educator whose work was published in numerous journals and magazines. Frank is the namesake of the Frank Hodgins Fellowship Fund for graduate students in English at the University of Illinois. Hodgins attended Urbana High School. She earned a BA in mathematics from Yale University, and went on to receive her PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989.

Career Hodgins was Associate Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology from 1998 to 2000. She has been a professor at Carnegie Mellon University since 2000. She was Editor in Chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics from 2000 to 2002, and she served as Papers Chair for ACM SIGGRAPH in 2003. She was elected the president of ACM SIGGRAPH in 2017. Prior to being elected president, she served as director at large from 2009 to 2017.

Disney Research Hodgins joined Disney Research in 2008 and founded the Disney Research Pittsburgh lab. Much of her research there has been focused on motion capture and computer animation technologies. In 2012 she was part of a team that developed and demonstrated a technique for motion-capture acting to be performed with a single camera and no markers.

Facebook AI Research Lab Beginning in summer 2018, Hodgins is on partial leave from CMU to build a Facebook AI Research Lab located in Pittsburgh.

RAI Institute In 2022, Hodgins joined the RAI institute as VP, Strategic Projects & Research. She "oversees strategic projects at the Institute and supports research teams in foundation models, data capture, ethics and society, and humanoids."

Awards Hodgins has received a NSF Young Investigator Award, a Packard Fellowship, and a Sloan Fellowship. In 2010, she was awarded the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. In 2017 she was awarded the ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A. Coons Award. Hodgins was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2018 for "contributions to character animation, human simulation, and humanoid robotics".

References

External links CMU Robotics Institute page CMU School of Computer Science page Disney Research page Archived 2015-10-31 at the Wayback Machine

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jessica Hodgins

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jessica Hodgins claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jessica Hodgins before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jessica Hodgins ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jessica Hodgins

In research: Jessica Hodgins appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jessica Hodgins in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jessica Hodgins is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American roboticists, American women computer scientists, Carnegie Mellon University alumni, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jessica Hodgins outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Jessica Hodgins in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jessica Hodgins means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jessica Hodgins out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jessica Hodgins in simple terms?

Jessica K. Hodgins is an American roboticist and researcher who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and School of Computer Science.

Why does Jessica Hodgins matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jessica Hodgins?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jessica Hodgins.