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Arnav Jhala

AJ
A headshot of Arnav Jhala sitting at his office desk.

Computer Science

Associate Professor

Computer Science

402 Venture IV

919.513.6698 Website

Bio

Arnav Jhala is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NC State University. He joined the faculty in 2016 as part of the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster in Visual Narrative and serves as co-director of the Digital Games Research Initiative.

Before joining NC State, Jhala was a founding faculty member in the Department of Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz. He has held positions at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, Duke TIP, Virtual Heroes Inc. and the Indian Space Research Organization’s Space Applications Center.

Education

Ph.D. Computer Science NC State University 2009

M.S. Computer Science NC State University 2004

B.Eng Computer Engineering Gujarat University 2001

Area(s) of Expertise

Jhala’s research focuses on computational methods for representing and mediating human interpretation and communication of narrative in interactive visual media, including film and games. His group develops symbolic and probabilistic models for visual discourse and applies generative techniques to support automated and collaborative creation of visual narratives. His past projects include games for exploring aesthetic preferences, studying expert gameplay and modeling gestural aesthetics in dance.

Publications

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Grants

Date: 09/15/20 - 5/14/25
Amount: $577,574.00
Funding Agencies: US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)

Computers are increasingly being used to simulate and analyze complex social phenomena, but do not account geographical, cultural, economic, and sociopolitical systems that influence social relationships. We identify the need to account for real-world, localized information in social simulation. Our research objectives are to create computational models of social influence and opinion change that support believable social simulation and facilitate novel insights for experts through scaffolded interaction. This project, if successful, will contribute fundamental advances in computational social science, including advances individually in both computer science and social science as well as bidirectional exchange of ideas across disciplines.

Date: 09/15/22 - 9/30/23
Amount: $170,249.00
Funding Agencies: US Dept. of Defense (DOD)

This proposal includes scope to study the use of gamified modalities of curriculum for education and training in acquisition methods and simulation tools for the defense workforce.

Date: 03/15/22 - 8/15/23
Amount: $57,298.00
Funding Agencies: NC Department of Transportation

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) created a new knowledge repository called Communicate Lessons, Exchange Advice, Record (CLEAR) as an official platform to store and retrieve knowledge. We will transfer a construction domain language model to improve the search capabilities of CLEAR database. A construction language inference model has already been developed as a prototype that can make meaningful connections between lessons learned and best practices within the construction domain vocabulary. A proof of concept will be validated by project managers on a set of pre-selected projects by the NCDOT Value Management Office.

Date: 02/25/22 - 9/30/22
Amount: $39,231.00
Funding Agencies: US Dept. of Defense (DOD)

1) Literature review of gamification of training, particularly in business or procurement fields. 2) Identify industry contacts that were used for interviews or focus groups to inform phase I products (organization names, points of contact, email and phone numbers) 3) Develop an attribute map of ideal game attributes for acquisition training based on stakeholder and expert interviews (in coordination with NPS MBA team) (link: https://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/thought-leadership/wharton-at-work/2012/07/attribute-map-2/#:~:text=An%20Attribute%20Map%20is%20a,position%20with%20respect%20to%20competitors.) 4) Identify other game features or design considerations gathered through stakeholder interviews or expert interviews. 5) Develop case vignettes of games being used in commercial or public business training to date. 6) Provide user feedback from MBA students playing the game prototype developed at NPS (will be provided to MBA students as an executable file). 7) Complete IRB preparation required for future Phase II experiments at NC State. 8) Finalize contact list and short capabilities statement for potential commercial partners for future game development at NC State.

Date: 01/01/21 - 12/31/21
Amount: $50,000.00
Funding Agencies: Epic Games, Inc.

transVRse is an automatic viewpoint computation and navigation support toolkit in VR. The current version is being used for the analysis of para-hydrogen pathways in dynamic molecular simulations by the Ab Inito Materials Simulations Group at Duke and Hyperpolarization Lab at NCSU.

Date: 05/01/20 - 12/31/20
Amount: $64,834.00
Funding Agencies: Laboratory for Analytic Sciences

We are interested in projects that will develop and demonstrate methods and tools to identify data relevant to a given analytic question within diverse and potentially large data sets. The process of finding the ����������������right��������������� data to support an analysis could potentially introduce significant errors and biases, and so methods and tools for data triage must be characterized in a way that makes clear their appropriate use in rigorous analytic processes. Finally, data increasingly must be discovered within less traditional formats, such as audio or speech recordings or video, that challenge more common triage and search techniques.

Date: 04/15/17 - 5/15/18
Amount: $49,999.00
Funding Agencies: Lenovo

This project seeks to create an intelligent monitoring and visualization framework for communication across different groups involved in design, development, and release of hardware and software products within Lenovo.


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