Purdue Calumet student / Crown Point resident is animated about his future

Igor Manevski is intrigued by animation.

Creating animated movies

Hoping to learn how to create animated movies is what attracted him to Purdue University Calumet and its computer graphics technology program some six years ago. 

After he graduates Sunday (5/19) with a baccalaureate degree, the Crown Point resident and Dean’s List student is optimistic about landing a job in the graphics unit of a Chicago mobile application company. 

“It’s looking promising,” the 26-year-old native of Macedonia said.  

Glass half full

Then again, he has been a glass half full kind of guy throughout his life.  

After moving to America with his parents and sister when he was 10, “I was able to speak English fluently within two months,” he said. 

It was during his years at Crown Point High School that he became interested in animation. 

“As I watched TV, I took special notice of the fantastic (computer graphics) animated scenes and their details,” he said. “After reading about the software that’s used to design those scenes, I really got interested.”  

Closer to home

When the cost of attending an out-of-state animation technical school proved prohibitive and a closer-to-home alternative came up short in his expectations, he turned to Purdue Calumet.

“My sister also came here and graduated in 2003 in criminal justice and gerontology,” Manevski said. “She brought me the (university) catalog; that’s how I found out about Purdue Calumet’s CGT program with a track in animation.”

For his senior design project in animation, he has researched efficiency in computer graphics imaging and developed a series of 3-dimensional, rigid body animated scenes. One is a sports car that he brought to life from his own design inspired by Lamborghini among other super and hyper cars.

“I designed my car from the inspiration of other super cars,” he said. “I added detail that attempts to demonstrate emotion that is so convincing my car appears real.”

Bright future

What also appears real, according to Purdue Calumet Assistant Professor of Computer Graphics Technology Magesh Chandramouli, is a bright future for his student.

“Igor is one of the most talented and responsible students I have worked with,” the professor said. “Owing to his diligence and unwavering commitment, he will scale great heights in his career.”

Reflecting on his Purdue Calumet experience, one that also has included opportunities to serve as a teacher’s assistant tutor, hold a few part-time jobs, conduct freelance work and participate on the men’s tennis squad, Manevski said, “Purdue Calumet has prepared me for greater responsibilities, higher thinking and tackling projects with research. We’re here to learn how to learn in a timely fashion, and I feel well prepared to continue my lifelong learning.”

I would like to thank the program faculty and staff for their outstanding efforts and superb work in documenting and preparing the self-study reports.  Everyone made a tremendous effort to coordinate the materials required for presentation to the evaluation team members. 

Congratulations to everyone involved!

Chuck Winer
Professor and Head
Computer Information Technology and Graphics

IARIA initiates a series of on-line journals especially dedicated to promote outstanding papers presented in IARIA conferences. The journals will consider inviting extended version of papers that either have been awarded or received very high ranking during the review process. “Invitation to publish in the IARIA Journal is indeed an endorsement of quality work,” said Niaz Latif, Dean, School of Technology. 

The paper covers multiple findings from the origin of biometric technology, its application in the modern world, and new ideas that have made this technology practice very useful and popular. It also provides an assessment of how future developments of Natural Disaster Response Systems can benefit from utilizing parts of this technology during search and rescue situations to administer emergency medical care for disaster-stricken victims that may be unresponsive and without identification. Using biometric technologies such as fingerprint identification and iris recognition software on handheld devices will allow responders to scan fingerprints or the iris of unresponsive victims to gain emergency medical records that their healthcare professionals use to treat them.

• Kevin Grskovich & Miena Gorgi, Computer Information Technology and Graphics
  A Preliminary Research on Automating Security Incident Response in Virtualized Linux Environment
  Mentor: Michael Tu, Assistant Professor, Computer Information Technology

• Mehran Latif & Francisco Rodriguez, Computer Information Technology and Graphics
  3D Game Simulation for Wind Energy Education
  Mentor: Ge Jin, Assistant Professor, Computer Graphics Technology, and John Moreland, Senior Research Scientist, CIVS

• Mehran Latif, Computer Information Technology and Graphics
  Educational Mobile Apps for Visual Signal Transmission inside a 3D
  Mentor: Keyuan Jiang, Professor, Computer Information Technology

• Dustin Franz, Computer Information Technology and Graphics
  Analyzing Air Quality in North West Indiana Using the Internet
  Mentor: Ricardo A. Calix, Assistant Professor, Computer Information Technology 

During this two-day intensive workshop, twelve Munster high school and middle school teachers as well as two Munster administrators and one Gary high school teacher learned and practiced how to teach computational thinking through the use of scenario based learning techniques. 

Computational thinking (CT) is a problem-solving process that includes (but is not limited to) the formulating problems in a way that enables one to use a computer and other tools to help solve them.  In addition we process logically to organize and analyze data.  We then represent data through abstractions such as models and simulations and automate solutions through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps), and identify, analyze, and implement possible solutions with the goal of achieving the most efficient and effective combination of steps and resources. 

In Scenario Based Learning, we do not define the exact details of the problem.  This requires the student to clarify the details of the problem.  If the problem is uniquely defined then only a unique (same) solution will be solved by all of the students.  The SBL method requires a subject matter expert (SME) to interact with the students to help clarify and define the problem. In this way each student has the ability to uniquely solve the problem, not to cookie sheet the solution. Teaching using SBL has the instructor acting more as a resource and not as a “talking head” at the front of the class. 

Students need a special set of thinking skills to work to define the problem.  We define this as Computation Thinking.  Computational Thinking is paired with Scenario-Based Learning as a technique to teach the workshop participants how to better prepare their students to be able to use computers in different ways as they problem solve in various disciplines.