Towaki Takikawa

I am a Computer Science PhD student at the University of Toronto, supervised by Sanja Fidler and Alec Jacobson. I am supported by the Borealis AI Fellowship.

Until recently, I worked as a Research Scientist at NVIDIA Research on the New Experiences Research group with David Luebke.

My research interests broadly span computer graphics, computer vision, and machine learning. 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!). Recently, I'm excited about generative AI [5] as a new distribution format that can empower artists.

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.

I also enjoy teaching, so let me know if you want a tutorial on 3D representations beyond meshes, NeRFs, neural fields, or 3D generative modeling!

I come from a small town in Oregon named Corvallis, but these days I hang out in the multicultural center of the world, Toronto. When I am not working I play music (violin and guitar) and sports (mostly basketball these days)!

CV / Blog / LinkedIn / GitHub / Google Scholar / Twitter

Email:
tovacinni-at-gmail-dot-com

Education

University of Toronto
Department of Computer Science
PhD Student
Computer Science
September 2020 -
Supervisors: Sanja Fidler and Alec Jacobson

University of Waterloo
Faculty of Mathematics
Bachelor of Mathematics
Major in Computer Science
September, 2016 - May, 2020

Publications

	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} }
	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}, }
	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}, }
	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} }
	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} }
	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} }
	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} }
	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}, }
	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}, }
	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} }

Experience

	NVIDIA Research Scientist Toronto, ON, Canada February, 2020 - November, 2023 Manager: Morgan McGuire, David Luebke New Experiences Research Group.
	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.
	Preferred Networks Research Intern Tokyo, Japan May, 2019 - August, 2019 Mentor: Richard Calland, Tommi Kerola Research on weakly-supervised instance segmentation.
	NVIDIA Research Intern Toronto, ON, Canada January, 2019 - April, 2019 Mentor: David Acuna, Sanja Fidler Research on representation learning for semantic segmentation.
	University of Waterloo Research Assistant Waterloo, ON, Canada September, 2018 - May, 2020 Mentor: Yuri Boykov Research on weakly-supervised semantic segmentation and domain adaptation.
	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.
	Tulip Interfaces Software Engineering Intern Somerville, MA, USA May, 2017 - August, 2017 Worked on software infrastructure and internal tools.
	Active911 Software Engineering Intern Philomath, OR, USA June, 2016 - August, 2016 Worked on software infrastructure and backend development.
	Linn Benton Community College Software Engineering Intern Corvallis, OR, USA June, 2015 - August, 2015 Worked on curriculum development for an introductory CS course.
	Oregon State University Research Intern Corvallis, OR, USA June, 2014 - August, 2014 Mentor: Alex Groce Research in automated software verification and validation.