Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series

During the 1970's Dr. Séquin has designed VLSI circuit chips, during the 1980's he was chairing the program committee for Soda Hall, the new CS-building at U.C. Berkeley, and currently he is collaborating with colleagues in mechanical engineering who do rapid prototyping of parts over the WWW and with artists who sculpt abstract geometrical art. In all these activities Dr. Séquin has used the assistance of computers, often through relatively simple prototype CAD tools. In this talk, he will show that certain insights about design and about CAD tool development remain true regardless of the domain of application. He will demonstrate how lessons learned in the 1980's in VLSI CAD can readily be applied again in the emerging fields of architectural CAD and CAD for mechanical engineers.

Carlo H. Séquin is a professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D degree in Experimental Physics from the University of Basel, Switzerland in 1969. From 1970 till 1976 he worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., on the design and investigation of Charge-Coupled Devices for imaging and signal processing applications. In 1977 he joined the faculty in the EECS Department at Berkeley. He started out by teaching courses on the subject of VLSI, thereby trying to build a bridge between the CS and the EE faculty. In the early 1980's, jointly with D. Patterson he introduced the `RISC' concept to the world of microcomputers. He was head of the Computer Science Division from 1980 till 1983. Later he concentrated on Computer Aided Design Tools for the design of integrated circuits.

His research interests now lie primarily in the fields of Computer Graphics and Computer Aided Design Tools for 3D geometry, architecture, and mechanical engineers. He is particularly interested in the issues that transcend individual tools, such as consistent and efficient data representations and good user interfaces.