[Theory] 7/12 Thesis Defense: Nicholas Kolkin, TTIC

[Mary Marre]

*Thesis Defense: Nicholas Kolkin, TTIC*

*When:  *     Monday*,* July 12th at *9:00 - 11:00 am CT*



*Where:*      TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, 5th floor, Room 530


*Note:*         In person attendance will be limited and require sign up.
More details to follow.



*Virtually: *  *Register in advance here
<https://uchicagogroup.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_l4Hez5bZQKmjtjL2ZSbRtQ>*



*Who: *       Nicholas Kolkin, TTIC


*Title:        *Non-Parametric Neural Style Transfer

*Abstract:  *It seems easy to imagine a photograph of the Eiffel Tower
painted in the style of Vincent van Gogh's 'The Starry Night', but upon
introspection it is difficult to precisely define what this would entail.
What visual elements must an image contain to represent the 'content' of
the Eiffel Tower? What visual elements of 'The Starry Night' are caused by
van Gogh's 'style' rather than his decision to depict a village under the
night sky? Precisely defining 'content' and 'style' is a central challenge
of designing algorithms for artistic style transfer, algorithms which can
recreate photographs using an artwork's style. My efforts defining these
terms, and designing style transfer algorithms themselves, are the focus of
this thesis. I will begin by proposing novel definitions of style and
content based on optimal transport and self-similarity, and demonstrating
how a style transfer algorithm based on these definitions generates outputs
with improved visual quality. Then I will describe how the traditional
texture-based definition of style can be expanded to include elements of
geometry and proportion by jointly optimizing a keypoint-guided deformation
field alongside the stylized output's pixels. Finally I will describe a
framework inspired by both modern neural style transfer algorithms and
traditional patch-based synthesis approaches which is fast, general, and
offers state-of-the-art visual quality.


*Thesis Advisor:* *Greg Shakhnarovich* <greg at ttic.edu>




Mary C. Marre
Faculty Administrative Support
*Toyota Technological Institute*
*6045 S. Kenwood Avenue*
*Chicago, IL  60637*
*mmarre at ttic.edu <mmarre at ttic.edu>*
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