Niner Engineer presents AI research at a top global technology conference
Andrei Vince, a third-year computer engineering student, traveled to Hong Kong to present collaborative research at SIGGRAPH Asia, Dec. 15-18. One of the world’s top conferences for computer graphics and interactive technology, SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 featured presenters from Pixar, NVIDIA, Adobe and universities across the globe.
The project — led by Sabri Gökmen, assistant professor of architecture — was developed with contributions from Vince and co-author Aidan Oh. The research grew out of the Office of Undergraduate Research Summer Research Program, which gave Vince the opportunity to work on the technical side of the system during the summer term.
The team developed an AI-powered framework that has generated more than 50,000 architectural variations to train and evaluate future AI models, integrating cellular automata, diffusion models and language models.
“Presenting at SIGGRAPH Asia was a significant milestone for me. Our poster sessions drew questions from industry practitioners and researchers actively working on architectural AI systems, which reinforced that our cellular automata framework addresses real-world production challenges, not just academic theory. The international exposure showed me how quickly synthetic training data research is moving from labs into practice.”
–Andrei Vince
Undergraduate presentations at SIGGRAPH Asia are uncommon, and the acceptance highlights UNC Charlotte’s growing strength in cross-college collaboration and student-supported research.
To read the article, visit Inside Charlotte.