computer science

Ming C. Lin

Ming C. Lin is a computer science 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 Ming C. Lin rather than just read about it. In short: Ming Chieh Lin is a Taiwanese-American computer scientist and a Barry Mersky and Capital One Endowed Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is also the former chair of the Department of Computer Science. Prior to moving to Maryland in 2018, Lin was the John R. & Louise S.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Ming Chieh Lin is a Taiwanese-American computer scientist and a Barry Mersky and Capital One Endowed Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is also the former chair of the Department of Computer Science. Prior to moving to Maryland in 2018, Lin was the John R. & Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Early life and education Lin was born in Taiwan. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1980 and settled in California, where she attended Sunny Hills High School. After high school, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in 1988, a Master of Science (M.S.) in 1991, and a Ph.D. in computer science and electrical engineering in 1993. She joined the UNC faculty in 1997.

Career Lin is known for her work on collision detection, and in particular for the Lin–Canny algorithm for maintaining the closest pair of features of two moving objects, for the idea (with Cohen, Manocha, and Ponamgi) of using axis-aligned bounding boxes to quickly eliminate from consideration pairs of objects that are far from colliding, and for additional speedups to collision detection using bounding box hierarchies. Her software libraries implementing these algorithms are widely used in commercial applications including computer aided design and computer games. More generally, her research interests are in physically based modeling, haptics, robotics, 3D computer graphics, computational geometry, and interactive computer simulation. Lin is the Editor in Chief Emeritus of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2011-2014). She is currently a member of the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors and a member of Computing Research Association-Women (CRA-W) Board of Directors.

Awards and honors In 2003, UNC gave Lin their Hettleman Prize for Scholarly and Artistic Achievements, and in 2007, she was named as the Beverly W. Long Distinguished Professor. She has won many best-paper awards for her research, and was given the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee 2010 Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award "in recognition of her seminal contributions in the area of interactive physics-based interaction and simulation for virtual environments." In 2011 she was listed as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for her research in geometric modeling and computer graphics, and she was listed as one of the 2012 IEEE Fellows for her "contributions to real-time physics-based interaction and simulation for virtual environments, robotics and haptics".

Personal life Lin is married to her frequent collaborator and UMD faculty colleague, Dinesh Manocha.

References

External links Ming C. Lin home page at the Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill GAMMA research group at the Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ming C. Lin

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ming C. Lin claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, 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 Ming C. Lin 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 Ming C. Lin 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 Ming C. Lin

In research: Ming C. Lin appears in computer science 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 Ming C. Lin 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: Ming C. Lin is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American scientists, 21st-century Taiwanese scientists, 21st-century Taiwanese women, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ming C. Lin 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 Ming C. Lin in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ming C. Lin 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 Ming C. Lin out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ming C. Lin in simple terms?

Why does Ming C. Lin matter?

Because it connects several computer science 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 Ming C. Lin?

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 Ming C. Lin.