Computer science and computer animation students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have access to even higher technology now that the new computer science building is open: A full motion capture laboratory.

The lab, located on the first floor of the new facility, is unique in the state of Louisiana. It will allow students to dress up in a special black body suit, covered in strategically located white spheres, and capture animation for use in video game development and computer animation production.

“It’s about $100,000 worth of eight-megapixel cameras from Vicon,” said Jared Chambliss, a computer science graduate student. “Most of their products are used not in the game development area, but [...] for bioinformatics companies to analyze movement.”

The red light-emitting motion capture cameras follow the movement of the white spheres against the black backdrop.

“Basically, all those little sensor dots,” said David Ducrest, a computer science major who is using the lab for one of his projects. “The camera will track them in 3D space.”

The orbs are placed on strategic locations corresponding with bones and joints all over the body, allowing for computers to interpret bodily movements.

“We can associate these dots with different bones in the body,” said Ducrest.

The files generated at then mapped to computer models. The result is eerily accurate animation superimposed on students’ digital creations.

“You can say, ‘I want this bone to affect these polygons,’” said Ducrest. “So when this bone moves, those polygons are going to move.”

Tim Roden, Ph.D., the professor in charge of the equipment, said that because the equipment is new, students and faculty in the department are still learning the nuances of its operation. He demonstrated a figure dancing which was captured in the lab, noting a few minute problems in the animation he was working on.

“In the game class I’m teaching now, most people have a terrain with some trees and rocks, and a sky and a waterfall, and stuff like that,” said Roden, who is teaching CMPS 427, a class that will use the lab, “but there’s no people walking around. The next step in the class, now that we have this equipment, one of the assignments is going to be to get a character or a monster walking around. They’ll go in the motion capture lab and record their own data.”

Chambliss said that if the department needed to capture larger scenes, the tripod-based setup of the lab allowed them to move the system anywhere they needed to.

Roden said the computer science department would be open to allow any group on campus to use the lab once the department had the lab fully operational.

“Using a motion capture system is part of the education for animation,” said Yeon Choi, an art professor who teaches computer animation. “For the senior students, when they do the senior project, I’m sure a lot of students are going to find it very useful.”

She said that the system would not take work away from her students.

“After we use the motion system, we still need to fix a lot of things,” she said. “To be able to get natural movements, a lot of times we have to work for 80 hours. With the motion capture system, it can be done quickly, although there’s some cleanup jobs. It’s very exciting news.”

Roden said that a graduate-level course, entertainment computing, would be using the equipment this fall.

“Normal, average art and computer students will be able to use this to do animation,” said Chambliss. “They can come in and put on a fun little suit with reflective markers on it, and instead of having to sit there and hand-animate a foot moving, they can just move their foot or dance around, and be able to export that data into a 3D model to get a more fluid range of motion.”

Note:  Super proud of this. Beat the local paper to the story. Hot scoop!

The former head of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette political science department, Donn Kurtz, Ph.D., has stepped down following allegations of sexual harassment in a complaint, civil lawsuit and criminal charges levied by a former student, Kelly May, who graduated in May 2006.

May, a graduate of the political science department, has filed a civil charge against Kurtz, UL Lafayette, the board of supervisors of the University of Louisiana system and the state of Louisiana. The suit, filed on Nov. 3, claims that “plaintiff, Kelly May, was subjected to a pattern of conduct in violation of her civil rights and human rights, caused by unreasonable intrusions into the most private and confidential subjects by Donn M. Kurtz, II, individually and in the course and scope of his employment.”

A criminal charge has also been filed with the Lafayette City Police Department. It was transferred to the UL Lafayette Police Department, where it is currently under investigation. The initial report reads that May alleges “that her former advisor touched her breast on several occasions over a two-and-a-half year period,” and that the most recent occurence was on Nov. 4, 2005.

The civil suit reads, “in the Fall of 2003, in one of her sessions with her advisor, Donn M. Kurtz, II, the defendant, inappropriately touched and fondled plaintiff’s breasts while he was alone with her in her office.” It then alleges that Kurtz touched May “inappropriately virtually every time he advised her in his office while they were alone,” and claims this continued until November 2005.

It goes on to accuse Kurtz of “assault, battery, sexual assault and sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, through reckless and outrageous offensive conduct exemplified by a pattern of conduct and particular incidents unwelcomed, non-consensual assault, battery, sexual assault, and sexual battery.”

“There has been an allegation by a former student concerning Dr. Kurtz’s behavior, which is currently under investigation by the university,” said David Barry, Ph.D. and dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Barry said the complaint with the university was filed at some point after May’s graduation in May 2006.

Kurtz, who had served as the department head since at least 2000, stepped down following the accusation, and was replaced by his predecessor, Janet Frantz, Ph.D. Kurtz is still listed as the department head on certain sections of the UL Lafayette Web site. He is currently on medical leave for the rest of the semester, according to students in one of his former classes.

According to Barry, an internal complaint relating to the matter is currently under investigation by Patricia Cottonham, associate dean of students at UL Lafayette. Cottonham, Kurtz, Frantz and several faculty members in the department of political science all declined to comment for this story, because of certain restrictions the university has regarding confidentiality for “personnel matters.”

Kurtz graduated from Tulane University in 1971. According to the political science department’s Web site, he was honored with a Faculty Excellence Award given by graduates of Blue Key, an honorary leadership society at UL Lafayette. He has edited a compilation of articles about political families and authored a text on Louisiana supreme courts and their interaction with U.S. justices.

Though the Democrats may have won control of the House of Representatives, Louisiana’s District 7 did not become one of the number of newly Democratic seats, as incumbent Repubilican Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. earned a second term, besting Democratic challenger Mike Stagg with a 71 percent majority.

Boustany’s second campaign amassed 113,486 votes, beating Stagg in all eight parishes located in District 7. Stagg’s final tally was 29 percent, or 47,007 votes.

“It is time to put the partisan bickering aside and really get to work solving the problems the American public expects government to solve,” said Boustany, 50, at his victory party at Pat’s Downtown in Lafayette. “You can count on me to work across party lines as I have done the past two years. I have worked hard and I am proud of the record I have amassed these last two years.”

“The fact [is] that he’s accepted all this money from the special interest groups and as a result, his votes don’t reflect the interest of the district,” said Stagg, 54, after his loss became apparent. “The real problem with his campaign is that he refused to debate. The only time he answered questions was in a structured setting.”

Stagg ran his campaign without accepting any funding from the Democratic Party or Political Action Committees funded by special interest groups.

“I don’t think [Stagg] should have done anything differently,” said Simon Hayes, a UL Lafayette political science major and membership coordinator of the school’s chapter of College Democrats. “I think he stood by his principles. I think it was just a matter of a candidate with $1 million versus a candidate with $35,000 to spend, and 30 percent compared to 70 percent is pretty admirable.”

Boustany’s supporters were predictably upbeat.

“I think he crosses partisan lines,” said Buddy Bonvillain, a political science major at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who worked on Boustany’s campaign team. Bonvillain said he felt that a Democratic house wouldn’t affect Boustany as much as other Republicans, because of Boustany’s record at working with the opposing party.

“I’m going to continue working in a bi-partisan way,” said Boustany of his future plans in office. “I was very successful these past few years in getting a number of bills passed as the primary author. I had Democratic co-sponsors on every one of my bills. I’ve developed some great relationships across the aisle, and I’ll continue to work in a bi-partisan fashion.

“Long-term [plans] for the next two years, obviously, fulfilling my prescription for prosperity, which I started work on in this past term, that’s something I laid out before. It talks about economic development, infrastructure, reforming health care, improving education in the district, be very strong on national defense, and protecting our Louisiana values.

“The issue with Iraq is much more complicated than what we get in sound bites, and the bottom line is, we have to do what we can to secure protection of our troops,” said Boustany. “Secondly, we need come to an agreement with the brand-new Iraqi government.”

Before serving in Congress, Boustany was a heart surgeon based in Lafayette. He was forced to cease practice because of arthritic hands. He graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1978. He was the first Republican elected in the history of his district.

Stagg, who ran an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1998, is a self-described “entrepreneur [and] civic activist.” He has lived in Lafayette for almost all his life.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the Lafayette Economic Development Authority proudly held the grand opening for the Louisiana Immersive Technology Enterprise, or LITE, last Wednesday.

The facility, recognizable due to the large egg-like structure at its entrance, is located on Cajundome Blvd. across from Cajun Field.

“It’s an exciting day for Lafayette, and it’s an exciting day for Louisiana,” said Blanco, in an address inside the facility following the ceremonial ribbon cutting. “When Neil Armstrong took that first step on the moon, he called it ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Ladies and gentlemen, today is one giant leap for Lafayette, and one giant leap for Louisiana.”

“This is indeed a great day,” said Jerry Luke LeBlanc, Louisiana’s commissioner of administration and a Lafayette native, “not only for Louisiana, but for Acadiana, this region and Lafayette. [It is] the culmination of a lot of hard work, dedication and belief in a dream.”

“Gov. Kathleen Blanco has made education and economic equal partners in her plans for this state’s recovery and renaissance,” said Ray Authement, Ph.D., and president of UL Lafayette. “We applaud her for taking the common sense approach and encourage her to stay the course. We’re here because she had the vision, courage and foresight to invest $40 million in LITE.”

“The state knows what’s happening at the regional level and at the national level, said Carolina Cruz-Neira, executive director and chief scientist at LITE. “The state knows what we need to be competitive as a state and as a city in the regional and national arena. They are trying to do something that helps people, that improves the quality of life.”

The facility, in planning and construction stages for the past six years, is one of the most advanced supercomputing and visualization centers in the world.

“Dr. Carolina Cruz tells me that there are only four states in this country that have similar investments,” said Blanco excitedly, “and when I say similar, she clarifies that California, Illinois, Indiana and Virginia perhaps have either supercomputing capacity or imaging capacity, but none have both. No state has as much invested in one place as this one facility here in Lafayette, La. [...] Only Germany and Japan are competing at this level — this is how powerful this combined investment positions Louisiana in the global economy in technology.”

“I was in Germany for a similar supercomputing opening,” said Dennis McKenna, CEO of Silicon Graphics, Inc., the company which provided the supercomputers that power the LITE facility, “and this was a supercomputing center funded by the German government, and I must say, being here today, you have something that is state of the art in the state of Louisiana that compares to what the country of Germany has committed to. The potential of this computing center; this visualization center is equivalent to anything I’ve seen in the world today.”

LeBlanc said that “a facility like LITE, where you can have unlimited opportunities, unlimited ability to draw business not only from other parts of the country but from around the world, will provide future stability for our state and for our region.”

“Imagine you are an engineer, and you are designing a building like [the LITE building],” said Cruz-Neira. “You want to be air efficient. You want to have a good temperature. You want to have all the rooms evenly cool, evenly warm up. We would be able to simulate it, and change the configuration of the rooms and the fans, and then an engineer would be able to see whether or not his design is efficient. He’s going to be able to do that on the fly, because we not only see, we compute.”

“I believe that this is a turning point in our economic development history for this state,” said Blanco. “The LITE center swings its doors wide open to the next century. This is our future. Make yourselves at home, because we are here to stay. This region is now competitive in ways that we could not even imagine as short a time as five or 10 years ago.”

The LITE facility is not the only new technology being introduced this fall.

“On Oct. 31, just a few weeks away,” said Authement, “we’ll gather again to install, or to light, the Louisiana Optical Network that gives us connectivity with all of the research universities in the state, and to the LambdaRail (a high-speed fiber-optic network), to give us access to all the research at universities from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean.”

Blanco said these two projects would work together to provide an unparalleled opportunity for Louisiana.

“The first major technology investment that I directed after I became governor came in September of 2004, when I announced the state would invest $40 million in a network called LONI, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative,” said Blanco. “LONI is the network that interconnects all our research universities and then moves them out on to the LambdaRail to connect to all the computers in the world. This powerful network, when combined with this LITE system, positions us in such a way that all of our scientists can collaborate.”

“The way science and engineering is done is going to change,” said Bradd Clark, Ph.D., the dean of sciences at UL Lafayette. “We are bringing a facility that will speed up the rapid change in science and engineering for the betterment of all mankind. I’m excited about this.”

“Those two investments put together position Louisiana in the most incredibly powerful way in the world of technology, which is the world of our future,” said Blanco. “It is our economic future.”

Blanco defended her decision to continue with the project after the budget problems caused by hurricanes last fall.

“There were many false prophets of doom who didn’t want the state to continue its investment in this LITE project after [Hurricane] Katrina,” said Blanco. “I knew it was risky, but didn’t let that stop us. We owe it to ourselves to become a leader in technology. We owe it to ourselves to be flexible enough to attract new opportunities for investors, and we owe it to ourselves not to let our darkest hours shut down our brightest opportunities. ”

“This is a really exciting time for the university,” said H. Gordon Brooks II, dean of the College of the Arts at UL Lafayette. “This LITE facility will give us unprecedented access to the most cutting edge visualization technology available.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Clark excitedly.