Sonia Grunwald

Sonia Grunwald

Seattle, Washington, United States
926 followers 500+ connections

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Activity

Experience

  • Apple Graphic

    Apple

  • -

    Redmond, Washington, United States

  • -

    Burbank, California

  • -

    Claremont, California

  • -

    Claremont, California

  • -

    Greater Los Angeles Area

  • -

    Greater Los Angeles Area

Education

  • Pomona College Graphic

    Pomona College

    -

    Activities and Societies: Sponsor (selective leadership role as live-in mentor for first year students), Introductory Computer Science Teaching Assistant, ACM-W club member (Association for Computing Machinery Women)

Publications

  • Effects of Personalized Avatar Texture Fidelity on Identity Recognition in Virtual Reality

    The Eurographics Association

    Recent advances in 3D scanning, reconstruction, and animation techniques have made it possible to rapidly create photorealistic avatars based on real people. While it is now possible to create personalized avatars automatically with consumer-level technology, their visual fidelity still falls far short of 3D avatars created with professional cameras and manual artist effort. To evaluate the importance of investing resources in the creation of high-quality personalized avatars, we conducted an…

    Recent advances in 3D scanning, reconstruction, and animation techniques have made it possible to rapidly create photorealistic avatars based on real people. While it is now possible to create personalized avatars automatically with consumer-level technology, their visual fidelity still falls far short of 3D avatars created with professional cameras and manual artist effort. To evaluate the importance of investing resources in the creation of high-quality personalized avatars, we conducted an experiment to investigate the effects of varying their visual texture fidelity, specifically focusing on identity recognition of specific individuals. We designed two virtual reality experimental scenarios: (1) selecting a specific avatar from a virtual lineup and (2) searching for an avatar in a virtual crowd. Our results showed that visual fidelity had a significant impact on participants' abilities to identify specific avatars from a lineup wearing a head-mounted display. We also investigated gender effects for both the participants and the confederates from which the avatars were created.

    See publication

Honors & Awards

  • Cum Laude

    Pomona College

    Graduated Cum Laude from Pomona College.

  • Flintridge Grant Award Recipient

    Pomona College Art Department

  • People's Choice Award

    Claremont College's Hackathon

    We built a VR game controlled by hand motions using Oculus, LeapMotion, Unity3D, and Blender. Our game was called Revenge of the Butterflies.

  • Best Game Design

    Claremont College's Hackathon

    In 12 hours, created a procedurally-generated 3D space game in Unity in which the user can fly infinitely in any direction, interact with AI-driven enemy ships, and mine asteroids animated to shatter on contact with the player’s lasers. Produced all 3D models, materials, and textures used in the game using Blender and Photoshop. Implemented complete integration with xbox game controller.

  • Valedictorian

    Rowland Hall High School

Languages

  • English

    Native or bilingual proficiency

  • French

    Professional working proficiency

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