Björn Knafla

Current State of Affairs
In the beginning of 2008 I left the University of Kassel and am no longer a research associate but kept supervising ongoing theses of my students as a research helper.

The game development project has been picked up by Dennis Keßler - who was an invaluable help in the last semesters and carried the project with great passion, energy, and experience. See the education site of the Research Group Software Engineering for up-to date game development project informations.

Visit my web site www.bjoernknafla.com
or follow me on twitter
or contact me via email bjoern[at]bjoernknafla[dot]com
to see what I am up to these days .

Research Interests
I am mainly interested in parallel and distributed programming for: virtual reality (VR) applications, interactive real-time simulations, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D computer graphics, and computer games. Therefore I am researching the potential for parallelization and distribution at the different levels of abstraction of these applications, from the coarse architecture to the specific algorithms, the parallel / distributed design patterns emerging therefrom, and how to ease parallel and distributed programming.

Supervised Theses
Prof. Claudia Leopold and I supervise(d) the following theses together:

Christopher Bolte, master thesis, 2009 - ongoing
Dominik Riehl, Diploma1 thesis, 2008, Editor für 2,5D Welten aus Kachelelementen
Dennis Keßler, bachelor thesis, 2008, Paralleles Agenten-Modell
Christopher Bolte, bachelor thesis, 2008, CUDA Geometrie-Sensoren für Steering
Johannes Spohr, master thesis, 2008, Parallel Crowd Renderer (Pace)
Heiko Waldschmidt, Diploma1 thesis, 2008, Paralleler Java Pathfinder für ein Echtzeit-Strategiespiel
Jens Breitbart, Diploma1 thesis, 2008, Datenstrukturen zur Unterstützung von Steering auf GPUs
Alexander Wirz, master thesis, 2008, Parallele Räumliche 3D Datenstrukturen für Nachbarschafts-Abfragen
Christian Niemand, Diplom1 thesis, 2005, Artificial Intelligence for Racing Games/Simulations

Teaching

Project Spieleentwicklung MMORTS (Massive Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy) (Development of a Massive Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy Game (MMORTS)) by Bjoern Knafla. Ongoing winter semester 2007-2008.
Project Spieleentwicklung MMORTS (Massive Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy) (Development of a Massive Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy Game (MMORTS)) by Claudia Leopold and Bjoern Knafla. Summer semester 2007.
Project Spieleentwicklung MMORTS (Massive Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy) (Development of a Massive Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy Game (MMORTS)) by Bjoern Knafla. Winter semester 2006-2007.
Project GPGPU Raumklimabeurteilung (Assessment of the climate conditions in rooms using general purpose graphics processor programming (GPGPU)) by Prof. Dr. Claudia Leopold and Björn Knafla.
Project Physiksimulation für Spiele (Physics Simulation for Games) by Prof. Dr. Leopold and Bjoern Knafla in the summer semester 2006. Seminar Programmierung von Grafikkarten (General purpose programming of graphics cards) by Prof. Dr. Leopold and Bjoern Knafla in the summer semester 2006.
Project Spieleentwicklung (Developing Computer Games) in the winter semester 2005/2006. Project KI und Technologie für Computer-/Videospiele (Computer-/Videogame AI and Technology) in the summer semester 2005.
Seminar KI in Spielen (AI in Games) by Prof. Dr. Leopold and Bjoern Knafla in the winter semester 2004/2005.
Helping with Einführung in die Programmierung für Informatik ( Introduction to Programming for Computer Science ) by Prof. Dr. Leopold in the winter semester 2004/2005.
Exercises for the lecture Algorithmen und Datenstrukturen (Algorithms and Data Structures) by Prof. Dr. Leopold in the summer semester 2004.

Publications

[WKL08] A. Wirz, B. Knafla, Cl. Leopold: Comparison of Spatial Data Structures in OpenMP-Parallelized Steering, Proc. Int. Conf. on High Performance Computing and Simulation, Cyprus, 2008, pp. 31-37.
[Kna07a] B. Knafla, C. Leopold: Parallelizing a Real-Time Steering Simulation for Computer Games with OpenMP, Parallel Computing 2007 - ParCo2007, Jülich, 2007, pp. 219-226. (Slides)
[Kna06b] C. Leopold und B. Knafla: Projektarbeiten Spieleentwicklung im Fachgebiet Programmiersprachen/-methodik (Plakat DIN A0), Plakat vom Tag der Informatik an der Universität Kassel, 2006
[Kna06a] B. Knafla: Wie kommt der Drache ins Computerspiel (Plakat DIN A0), Plakat vom Tag der Informatik an der Universität Kassel, 2006
[Kna03a] B. Knafla: Aufbau Interaktiver 3D Echtzeit Systeme zur Integration von Simulations-Engines, Diploma Thesis, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, 2003
[Nar03] A. Nareyek et al.: The 2003 Report of the IGDA's Artificial Intelligence Interface Standards Committee , 2003.