The human body is one of the most
complex objects that we know of and what
we're trying to do in this lab is to
build computer models of the human body.
We want to know how does the human skin
move for example when we move? How the
human body interacts with other things,
the things that you pick up, things that
you put on your body like a wearable
device or clothing. And one part of the
challenge is that human skin and other
soft tissues are thin, elastic structures
that deform a lot and there has been a
challenge to come up with a good
computer algorithms to simulate those.
And we recently solved this problem using
a new method and this new method has
been implemented in computer software
and the software has been commercialized
by a UBC spin-off company called Vital Mechanics.
In fact, the Vital Mechanics'
software has been used to
make major motion pictures such as
the Fantastic Beasts. So our goal is to
build a trustworthy, accurate model of
the human body. What we're doing in the
lab now is to try to measure these in
real human people and the goal is to not
just make realistic looking picture but
we want to be able to use this human
body model to predict things about the
human body. We also think that building a
good model of the human body will help
both science and art.
