Towaki Takikawa
I am currently working on infrastructure software for deploying generative AI. It lets you manage models on a cache hierarchy, hot swap models instantly, minimize cold starts, scale horizontally, maintain version control, and secure models.
If this sounds interesting, please reach out to towaki@outerport.com.
Until recently, I worked as a Research Scientist at NVIDIA Research
on the Hyperscale Graphics Systems team with David Luebke.
I was also concurrently a Computer Science PhD student (on leave) at the
University of Toronto, supervised by
Sanja Fidler and
Alec Jacobson,
supported by the Borealis AI Fellowship.
My research interests broadly span computer graphics, computer vision, machine learning, and systems.
In particular, I'm interested in distribution formats and infrastructure for visual content.
In the past, I have worked on neural fields
[1]
and their combination with differentiable data structures
[2,3,4]
as a new compressed data format for immersive media (3D JPEG!).
Outside of research, I enjoy working on
open source software for 3D machine learning (Kaolin Core,
Kaolin Wisp).
I generally enjoy straddling the line between research and engineering.
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Outerport
Co-Founder / CEO
July 2024 - Present
Model warehouse for fast AI deployments.
Reach out at towaki@outerport.com for more information.
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NVIDIA
Research Scientist
Toronto, ON, Canada
February, 2020 - November, 2023
Manager: Morgan McGuire, David Luebke
New Experiences Research Group, Hyperscale Graphics Systems.
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Lagrangian Hashing for Compressed Neural Field Representations
Shrisudhan Govindarajan, Zeno Sambugaro, Ahan Shabhanov, Towaki Takikawa, Weiwei Sun, Daniel Rebain, Nicola Conci, Kwang Moo Yi, Andrea Tagliasacchi
European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2024
Project Website /
Bibtex
@conference{shri2024laghash,
title={Lagrangian Hashing for Compressed Neural Field Representations},
year={2024},
venue={European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)},
authors={Shrisudhan Govindarajan and Zeno Sambugaro and Ahan Shabhanov and Towaki Takikawa and Weiwei Sun and Daniel Rebain and Nicola Conci and Kwang Moo Yi and Andrea Tagliasacchi}
}
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What You See is What You GAN: Rendering Every Pixel for High-Fidelity Geometry in 3D GANs
Alex Trevithick, Matthew Chan, Towaki Takikawa, Umar Iqbal, Shalini De Mello, Manmohan Chandraker, Ravi Ramamoorthi, Koki Nagano
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2024
Project Website /
Bibtex
@inproceedings{Trevithick2023,
author = {Alex Trevithick and Matthew Chan and Towaki Takikawa and Umar Iqbal and Shalini De Mello and Manmohan Chandraker and Ravi Ramamoorthi and Koki Nagano and},
title = {Rendering Every Pixel for High-Fidelity Geometry in 3D GANs},
booktitle = {arXiv},
year = {2023}
}
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Compact Neural Graphics Primitives with Learned Hash Probing
Towaki Takikawa, Thomas Müller, Merlin Nimier-David, Alex Evans, Sanja Fidler, Alec Jacobson, Alexander Keller
SIGGRAPH Asia, 2023
Project Website /
Bibtex
@inproceedings{takikawa2023compact,
title = {Compact Neural Graphics Primitives with Learned Hash Probing},
author = {Takikawa, Towaki and
M\"{u}ller, Thomas and
Nimier-David, Merlin and
Evans, Alex and
Fidler, Sanja and
Jacobson, Alec and
Keller, Alexander},
booktitle = {SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Conference Papers},
year = {2023},
}
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ATT3D: Amortized Text-To-3D Object Synthesis
Jonathan Lorraine, Kevin Xie, Xiaohui Zeng, Chen-Hsuan Lin, Towaki Takikawa, Nicholas Sharp, Tsung-Yi Lin, Ming-Yu Liu, Sanja Fidler, James Lucas
International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2023
Project Website /
Bibtex
@article{lorraine2023att3d,
title = {ATT3D: Amortized Text-to-3D Object Synthesis},
author = {Jonathan Lorraine and Kevin Xie and Xiaohui Zeng and Chen-Hsuan Lin and Towaki Takikawa and Nicholas Sharp and Tsung-Yi Lin and Ming-Yu Liu and Sanja Fidler and James Lucas},
journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.07349},
year = {2023},
}
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Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation
Chen-Hsuan Lin*, Jun Gao*, Luming Tang*, Towaki Takikawa*, Xiaohui Zeng*, Xun Huang, Karsten Kreis, Sanja Fidler, Ming-Yu Liu, Tsung-Yi Lin
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2023
Highlight (Top 2%)
Project Website /
Bibtex
@inproceedings{lin2023magic3d,
title={Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation},
author={Lin, Chen-Hsuan and Gao, Jun and Tang, Luming and Takikawa, Towaki and Zeng, Xiaohui and Huang, Xun and Kreis, Karsten and Fidler, Sanja and Liu, Ming-Yu and Lin, Tsung-Yi},
booktitle={IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ({CVPR})},
year={2023}
}
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Variable Bitrate Neural Fields
Towaki Takikawa, Alex Evans, Jonathan Tremblay, Thomas Müller, Morgan McGuire, Alec Jacobson, Sanja Fidler
SIGGRAPH North America, 2022
Project Website /
Code /
Bibtex
@inproceedings{takikawa2022variable,
title={Variable Bitrate Neual fields},
author={Towaki Takikawa and Alex Evans and Jonathan Tremblay and Thomas M\"uller and Morgan McGuire and Alec Jacobson and Sanja Fidler},
year={2022}
}
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A Dataset and Explorer for 3D Signed Distance Functions
Towaki Takikawa, Andrew Glassner, Morgan McGuire
Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT / i3D), 2022
Project Website /
Code /
Bibtex
@article{Takikawa2022SDF,
author = {Towaki Takikawa and Andrew Glassner and Morgan McGuire},
title = {A Dataset and Explorer for 3D Signed Distance Functions},
year = 2022,
month = {April},
day = 27,
journal = {Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT)},
volume = 11,
number = 2,
pages = {1--29},
url = {http://jcgt.org/published/0011/02/01/},
issn = {2331-7418}
}
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Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond
Yiheng Xie, Towaki Takikawa, Shunsuke Saito, Or Litany, Shiqin Yan, Numair Khan,
Federico Tombari, James Tompkin, Vincent Sitzmann, Srinath Sridhar
Eurographics / Computer Graphics Forum (EG / CGF), 2022
State of the Art Report (STAR)
Project Website /
Bibtex
@article{xie2021neural,
title={Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond},
author={Xie, Yiheng and Takikawa, Towaki and Saito, Shunsuke and Litany, Or and Yan, Shiqin and Khan, Numair and Tombari, Federico and Tompkin, James and Sitzmann, Vincent and Sridhar, Srinath},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.11426},
year={2021}
}
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RTMV: A Ray-Traced Multi-View Synthetic Dataset for Novel View Synthesis
Jonathan Tremblay, Moustafa Meshry, Alex Evans, Jan Kautz, Alexander Keller, Sameh Khamis, Charles Loop, Nathan Morrical, Thomas Müller, Koki Nagano, Towaki Takikawa, Stan Birchfield
Tech Report, 2022
Project Website /
Bibtex
@article{tremblay2022rtmv,
author = {Tremblay, Jonathan and Meshry, Moustafa and Evans, Alex and Kautz, Jan and Keller, Alexander and Khamis, Sameh and Loop, Charles and Morrical, Nathan and Nagano, Koki and Takikawa, Towaki and Birchfield, Stan},
title = {RTMV: A Ray-Traced Multi-View Synthetic Dataset for Novel View Synthesis},
journal = {arXiv preprinti arXiv:2205.07058},
year = {2022},
}
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Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-time Rendering with Implicit 3D Shapes
Towaki Takikawa*, Joey Litalien*, Kangxue Yin, Karsten Kreis, Charles Loop,
Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Alec Jacobson, Morgan McGuire, Sanja Fidler
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2021
Oral Presentation (Top 4%)
Project Website /
Code /
Video /
Bibtex
@article{takikawa2021nglod,
title = {Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-time Rendering with Implicit {3D} Shapes},
author = {Towaki Takikawa and
Joey Litalien and
Kangxue Yin and
Karsten Kreis and
Charles Loop and
Derek Nowrouzezahrai and
Alec Jacobson and
Morgan McGuire and
Sanja Fidler},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
year = {2021},
}
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Gated-SCNN: Gated Shape CNNs for Semantic Segmentation
Towaki Takikawa*, David Acuna*, Varun Jampani, Sanja Fidler
International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2019
Project Website /
Code /
Bibtex
@inproceedings{Takikawa2019GatedSCNNGS,
title={Gated-SCNN: Gated Shape CNNs for Semantic Segmentation},
author={Towaki Takikawa and David Acuna and Varun Jampani and Sanja Fidler},
year={2019}
}
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WATonomous
Software Director / Mentor
Waterloo, ON, Canada
May, 2017 - May, 2020
Helping the team engineer a fully autonomous Cheverolet Bolt.
Certified by GM as a designated test driver.
Working across the pipeline on perception, prediction, localization, planning.
Managing over 100+ students and 6 different software subteams.
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Preferred Networks
Research Intern
Tokyo, Japan
May, 2019 - August, 2019
Mentor: Richard Calland, Tommi Kerola
Research on weakly-supervised instance segmentation.
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NVIDIA
Research Intern
Toronto, ON, Canada
January, 2019 - April, 2019
Mentor: David Acuna, Sanja Fidler
Research on representation learning for semantic segmentation.
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University of Waterloo
Research Assistant
Waterloo, ON, Canada
September, 2018 - May, 2020
Mentor: Yuri Boykov
Research on weakly-supervised semantic segmentation and domain adaptation.
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NVIDIA
Systems Software Engineering Intern
Santa Clara, CA, USA
May, 2018 - August, 2018
Worked in the autonomous vehicles engineering team.
Developed data labeling and data recording systems in C / C++.
Performed hardware verification and validation in the lab.
Helped architect a hardware-based sensor synchronization system.
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Tulip Interfaces
Software Engineering Intern
Somerville, MA, USA
May, 2017 - August, 2017
Worked on software infrastructure and internal tools.
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Active911
Software Engineering Intern
Philomath, OR, USA
June, 2016 - August, 2016
Worked on software infrastructure and backend development.
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Linn Benton Community College
Software Engineering Intern
Corvallis, OR, USA
June, 2015 - August, 2015
Worked on curriculum development for an introductory CS course.
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Oregon State University
Research Intern
Corvallis, OR, USA
June, 2014 - August, 2014
Mentor: Alex Groce
Research in automated software verification and validation.
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Custom Gearbox
6 CIM Anodized
Quaternion Blast
CodeDay Portland 2015
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