About Me

Hi, I’m Barney — welcome to my corner of the internet!

I spend most of my time doing something best characterized as computer graphics research. I am broadly interested in how we can represent, simulate, and render the world in ways that are both principled and expressive.

Much of my work lives at the intersection of physics-based simulation, rendering, geometry, and machine learning, with a recurring focus on controllability, interpretability, and human-in-the-loop systems.

I’m especially drawn to problems where physical insight and learning complement each other: differentiable simulations, reduced-order models, and scene representations that let people interact with complex systems intuitively. At heart, I’m motivated by building tools that support storytelling, creativity, and exploration. In other words, I often ask the question: how can we come up with the most useful models (the right stories and abstractions), for varying notions of usefulness?

I currently get to explore these ideas in practice at Adobe, translating research into tools for artists through work on creative drawing systems.

I completed my M.S. in Computer Science at Georgia Tech , where I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Bo Zhu and Prof. Greg Turk . Before that, I received my B.S. from TU Budapest , where I was lucky to work with Prof. László Szécsi in the Computer Graphics Group .

I am happy to share with you tidbits from my life and things I find interesting. You can check out my…

• blog posts
• projects
• public code repositories: GitLab / GitSch / GitHub
• Instagram for the occasional sketch, doodle, or relic from my juggling-and-flipping era.

Professional Background

I feel incredibly fortunate to have worked on truly exciting problems with people I deeply admire, across academia and industry, and across several countries and cultures. Throughout these experiences, I’ve tried to stay close to what first pulled me into this field: merging art and technology into tools and systems that support artistic expression, meaningful interaction, and storytelling.

For more details, feel free to check out my Projects page.

Adobe

Machine Learning Engineer (Creative Drawing Apps)

July, 2025 – Present

San Jose, California, USA

After graduating from Georgia Tech, I returned to Adobe to translate innovative research ideas into user-facing product features.

Software Engineer Intern (Creative Drawing Apps)

May, 2024 – August, 2024

San Jose, California, USA

During the summer of 2024, I had a wonderful time interning with the Drawing & Painting team at Adobe, where I explored and implemented 2D geometry processing research papers to enhance some of the world’s most well-known creative software, fulfilling my lifelong dream of creating tools to tell amazing stories, and invoke emotions.

Georgia Institute of Technology

Graduate Student (MS) Researcher

August, 2023 – May 2025

Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Advisor: Prof. Bo Zhu, co-advised by Prof. Greg Turk
Thesis title: Differentiable 3D Scene Representations with Point-based Neural Methods

During my Master’s studies at Georgia Tech , I had a wonderful time delving into multiple topics in computer graphics, from physics-based deep learning to differentiable rendering, with my thesis research focusing on geometry representations.

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Research & Teaching Assistant

September, 2022 – July, 2023

• & February, 2020 – December, 2020

Budapest, Hungary

Advisor: Prof. László Szécsi
BSc Thesis: Controlling Laplacian Eigenfluids

I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (TU Budapest) in January 2023, conducting my research with the Computer Graphics Group .

Partly inspired by an eventful exchange year at TUM, my undergraduate thesis focused on reduced-order fluid simulations and using differentiable physics to teach neural networks to control physical systems.

After graduation, I was a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the 6th semester BSc course “3D Graphics”. (As an undergraduate, I had also been a TA for the “Programming 1” and “System Modelling” courses.)

Technical University of Munich

Erasmus Exchange Student

October, 2021 – September, 2022

Munich, Germany

During my undergraduate studies, I spent two semesters (2021–2022) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) as an Erasmus Exchange Student. I completed 50 credits, mostly cherry-picking some of the coolest research-based courses at the intersection of physics-based simulation, deep learning, computer graphics, and computer vision.

Dassault Systèmes 3DEXCITE

Graphics Engineer Intern

April, 2022 – September, 2022

Munich, Germany

Mentor: Holger Dammertz

While studying at TUM, I also had a wonderful time doing a 6-month internship with the Rendering R&D team at Dassault Systèmes 3DEXCITE , where I built a web-based 3D material editor from the ground up to enhance in-house artist workflows.

Outside academia, I enjoy long-distance running, music, board games, baking bread, cooking, and spending time with friends.