About

Doug L. James is the LeRa Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, holding a courtesy appointment in the Department of Music. Since June 2015, he has been a member of Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME). He holds three degrees in applied mathematics, including a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia earned in 2001. His academic background also includes a master's degree from the same university and a bachelor's degree from the University of Western Ontario. His research interests encompass computer graphics, computer sound, physically based modeling and animation, and reduced-order physics models. Prior to his current position, he served as an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and as an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University from 2006 to 2015. He has received numerous awards and honors, including a National Science Foundation CAREER award, fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation, and the ACM SIGGRAPH 2021 Computer Graphics Achievement Award. His contributions include significant work in wavelet turbulence, recognized with a 2012 Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has also held roles as a Technical Papers Program Chair for ACM SIGGRAPH and has worked as a consulting Senior Research Scientist at Pixar Animation Studios and NVIDIA.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer graphics (images)
• Mechanical engineering
• Engineering
• Computational science
• Algorithm
• Simulation
• Materials science
• Programming language
• Mathematics
• Engineering drawing

Selected publications

• SDFStent: Real-time interactive virtual stenting via SDF deformation fields

  ArXiv.org · 2026-05-21

  articleOpen access

  Stenting is among the most common transcatheter interventions for congenital heart disease (CHD). Patient-specific computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations can predict hemodynamic outcomes of intervention scenarios but require post-operative vascular geometries that reflect stent-induced shape changes, which existing tools either model inadequately or require extensive time or manual effort to generate. We present SDFStent, a signed distance function (SDF) based mesh deformation method for virtual stenting that operates in real time, maintains mesh integrity, and preserves junction geometry. The stent is modeled as a pipe surface composed of piecewise-capsule SDFs joined by a smooth-minimum operator. Mesh vertices near the expanding SDF surface are displaced along the SDF gradient with a compactly supported fall-off function and an alpha blending mask. SDFStent was benchmarked against three existing approaches and validated on three tetralogy of Fallot (ToF) patients and three coarctation of the aorta (CoA) patients using rigid-wall steady-state CFD simulations against clinical catheterization measurements. Against a prescribed diameter of 6.0 mm, the method produced a mean stented diameter of 5.92 $\pm$ 0.08 mm in 1.5 s, over 100$\times$ faster than the best stenting-specific comparator. All output meshes were watertight and self-intersection-free. CFD-simulated post-operative pressure drops agreed with clinical measurements within 4 mmHg (mean error 2 mmHg). SDFStent produces simulation-ready post-stent models that match prescribed stent dimensions at interactive speeds, from pre-operative anatomy and catheterization data alone. The implementation is open-source and available in 3D Slicer. Its scriptable architecture enables automated generation of large synthetic cohorts for data-driven surrogate modeling.

  PublisherOA PDF

• SDFStent: Real-time interactive virtual stenting via SDF deformation fields

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-05-21

  preprintOpen access

  Stenting is among the most common transcatheter interventions for congenital heart disease (CHD). Patient-specific computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations can predict hemodynamic outcomes of intervention scenarios but require post-operative vascular geometries that reflect stent-induced shape changes, which existing tools either model inadequately or require extensive time or manual effort to generate. We present SDFStent, a signed distance function (SDF) based mesh deformation method for virtual stenting that operates in real time, maintains mesh integrity, and preserves junction geometry. The stent is modeled as a pipe surface composed of piecewise-capsule SDFs joined by a smooth-minimum operator. Mesh vertices near the expanding SDF surface are displaced along the SDF gradient with a compactly supported fall-off function and an alpha blending mask. SDFStent was benchmarked against three existing approaches and validated on three tetralogy of Fallot (ToF) patients and three coarctation of the aorta (CoA) patients using rigid-wall steady-state CFD simulations against clinical catheterization measurements. Against a prescribed diameter of 6.0 mm, the method produced a mean stented diameter of 5.92 $\pm$ 0.08 mm in 1.5 s, over 100$\times$ faster than the best stenting-specific comparator. All output meshes were watertight and self-intersection-free. CFD-simulated post-operative pressure drops agreed with clinical measurements within 4 mmHg (mean error 2 mmHg). SDFStent produces simulation-ready post-stent models that match prescribed stent dimensions at interactive speeds, from pre-operative anatomy and catheterization data alone. The implementation is open-source and available in 3D Slicer. Its scriptable architecture enables automated generation of large synthetic cohorts for data-driven surrogate modeling.

  PublisherDOI

• Progressive Dynamics++: A Framework for Stable, Continuous, and Consistent Animation Across Resolution and Time

  ACM Transactions on Graphics · 2025-07-27

  article

  The recently developed Progressive Dynamics framework [Zhang et al. 2024] addresses the long-standing challenge in enabling rapid iterative design for high-fidelity cloth and shell animation. In this work, we identify fundamental limitations of the original method in terms of stability and temporal continuity. For robust progressive dynamics simulation we seek methods that provide: (1) stability across all levels of detail (LOD) and timesteps, (2) temporally continuous animations without jumps or jittering, and (3) user-controlled balancing between geometric consistency and enrichment at each timestep, thereby making it a practical previewing tool with high-quality results at the finest level to be used as the final output. We propose a general framework, Progressive Dynamics++, for constructing a family of progressive dynamics integration methods that advance physical simulation states forward in both time and spatial resolution, which includes Zhang et al. [2024]'s method as one member. We analyze necessary stability conditions for Progressive Dynamics integrators and introduce a novel, stable method that significantly improves temporal continuity, supported by a new quantitative measure. Additionally, we present a quantitative analysis of the trade-off between geometric consistency and enrichment, along with strategies for balancing between these aspects in transitions across resolution and time.

  PublisherDOI

• Acoustic Reliefs

  Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) · 2025-12-01

  otherOpen access

  We present a framework to optimize and generate Acoustic Reliefs: acoustic diffusers that not only perform well acoustically in scattering sound uniformly in all directions, but are also visually interesting and can approximate user-provided images. To this end, we develop a differentiable acoustics simulator based on the boundary element method, and integrate it with a differentiable renderer coupled with a vision model to jointly optimize for acoustics, appearance, and fabrication constraints at the same time. We generate various examples and fabricate two room-scale reliefs. The result is a validated simulation and optimization scheme for generating acoustic reliefs whose appearances can be guided by a provided image.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Progressing Level-of-Detail Animation of Volumetric Elastodynamics

  ArXiv.org · 2025-09-16

  preprintOpen access

  We extend the progressive dynamics model (Zhang et al., 2024) from cloth and shell simulation to volumetric finite elements, enabling an efficient level-of-detail (LOD) animation-design pipeline with predictive coarse-resolution previews facilitating rapid iterative design for a final, to-be-generated, high-resolution animation of volumetric elastodynamics. This extension to volumetric domains poses significant new challenges, including the construction of suitable mesh hierarchies and the definition of effective prolongation operators for codimension-0 progressive dynamics. To address these challenges, we propose a practical method for defining multiresolution hierarchies and, more importantly, introduce a simple yet effective topology-aware algorithm for constructing prolongation operators between overlapping (but not necessarily conforming) volumetric meshes. Our key insight is a boundary binding strategy that enables the computation of barycentric coordinates, allowing several off-the-shelf interpolants -- such as standard barycentric coordinates, Biharmonic Coordinates (Wang et al., 2015), and Phong Deformation (James, 2020) -- to serve as "plug-and-play" components for prolongation with minimal modification. We show that our progressive volumetric simulation framework achieves high-fidelity matching LOD animation across resolutions including challenging dynamics with high speeds, large deformations, and frictional contact.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Acoustic Reliefs

  ACM Transactions on Graphics · 2025-12-01

  articleOpen access

  We present a framework to optimize and generate Acoustic Reliefs : acoustic diffusers that not only perform well acoustically in scattering sound uniformly in all directions, but are also visually interesting and can approximate user-provided images. To this end, we develop a differentiable acoustics simulator based on the boundary element method, and integrate it with a differentiable renderer coupled with a vision model to jointly optimize for acoustics, appearance, and fabrication constraints at the same time. We generate various examples and fabricate two room-scale reliefs. The result is a validated simulation and optimization scheme for generating acoustic reliefs whose appearances can be guided by a provided image.

  PublisherDOI

• Progressive Dynamics for Cloth and Shell Animation

  ACM Transactions on Graphics · 2024-07-19 · 6 citations

  article

  We propose Progressive Dynamics, a coarse-to-fine, level-of-detail simulation method for the physics-based animation of complex frictionally contacting thin shell and cloth dynamics. Progressive Dynamics provides tight-matching consistency and progressive improvement across levels, with comparable quality and realism to high-fidelity, IPC-based shell simulations [Li et al. 2021] at finest resolutions. Together these features enable an efficient animation-design pipeline with predictive coarse-resolution previews providing rapid design iterations for a final, to-be-generated, high-resolution animation. In contrast, previously, to design such scenes with comparable dynamics would require prohibitively slow design iterations via repeated direct simulations on high-resolution meshes. We evaluate and demonstrate Progressive Dynamics's features over a wide range of challenging stress-tests, benchmarks, and animation design tasks. Here Progressive Dynamics efficiently computes consistent previews at costs comparable to coarsest-level direct simulations. Its matching progressive refinements across levels then generate rich, high-resolution animations with high-speed dynamics, impacts, and the complex detailing of the dynamic wrinkling, folding, and sliding of frictionally contacting thin shells and fabrics.

  PublisherDOI

• Deforming Patient-Specific Models of Vascular Anatomies to Represent Stent Implantation via Extended Position Based Dynamics

  Cardiovascular Engineering and Technology · 2024-10-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• WaveBlender: Practical Sound-Source Animation in Blended Domains

  2024-12-03

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Virtual Shape-Editing of Patient-Specific Vascular Models Using Regularized Kelvinlets

  IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering · 2024-02-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVE: Cardiovascular diseases, and the interventions performed to treat them, can lead to changes in the shape of patient vasculatures and their hemodynamics. Computational modeling and simulations of patient-specific vascular networks are increasingly used to quantify these hemodynamic changes, but they require modifying the shapes of the models. Existing methods to modify these shapes include editing 2D lumen contours prescribed along vessel centerlines and deforming meshes with geometry-based approaches. However, these methods can require extensive by-hand prescription of the desired shapes and often do not work robustly across a range of vascular anatomies. To overcome these limitations, we develop techniques to modify vascular models using physics-based principles that can automatically generate smooth deformations and readily apply them across different vascular anatomies. METHODS: We adapt Regularized Kelvinlets, analytical solutions to linear elastostatics, to perform elastic shape-editing of vascular models. The Kelvinlets are packaged into three methods that allow us to artificially create aneurysms, stenoses, and tortuosity. RESULTS: Our methods are able to generate such geometric changes across a wide range of vascular anatomies. We demonstrate their capabilities by creating sets of aneurysms, stenoses, and tortuosities with varying shapes and sizes on multiple patient-specific models. CONCLUSION: Our Kelvinlet-based deformers allow us to edit the shape of vascular models, regardless of their anatomical locations, and parametrically vary the size of the geometric changes. SIGNIFICANCE: These methods will enable researchers to more easily perform virtual-surgery-like deformations, computationally explore the impact of vascular shape on patient hemodynamics, and generate synthetic geometries for data-driven research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• CM/Collaborative Research: Simulation-based Software Tools for Automated Knitting

  NSF · $300k · 2016–2019

• HCC: Medium: Sound Rendering for Physically Based Simulation

  NSF · $1.2M · 2009–2015

• CAREER: Precomputing Data-driven Deformable Systems for Multimodal Interactive Simulation

  NSF · $236k · 2006–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Dinesh K. Pai

  University of British Columbia

  19 shared

• Jernej Barbič

  University of Southern California

  15 shared

• Danny M. Kaufman

  Seattle University

  12 shared

• Changxi Zheng

  12 shared

• Steve Marschner

  12 shared

• Jui-Hsien Wang

  12 shared

• Christopher D. Twigg

  META Health

  11 shared

• Theodore Kim

  Yale University

  10 shared

Labs

• Doug L. James Research GroupPI

  Research Group

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of British Columbia

  2001

Awards & honors

• NSF CAREER Award
• Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation
• ACM SIGGRAPH 2021 Computer Graphics Achievement Award
• 2012 Technical Achievement Award from The Academy of Motion…