Ming C. Lin

Ming C. Lin is the Barry Mersky & Capital One E-Nnovate Endowed Professor and Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, he held the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair at UNC Chapel Hill. His research spans Machine Learning, Physically-based Modeling and Simulation, Autonomous Systems, and Human-Computer Interaction. He leads the UMD GAMMA Research Group, focusing on differentiable physics, robotics, and traffic simulation.

Key achievements include pioneering work in collision detection (RAPID algorithm), physically-based sound synthesis, and autonomous driving systems. Lin has authored over 500 papers and holds numerous awards, including ACM and IEEE Fellowships. His teaching includes courses on Differentiable Programming and Autonomous Systems.

Research Highlights:

• Developed Genesis, a universal physics engine for robotics
• Advanced differentiable mesh representations (DMesh++/DMesh)
• Contributed to traffic-aware autonomous driving via differentiable traffic simulation
• Leadership in collision detection (RAPID algorithm)

Awards: ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, National Academy of Inventors, Virtual Reality Academy, and over 20 best paper awards.

Labs/Teams: Co-director of UMD and UNC GAMMA Groups, active in robotics and graphics research communities.