Mengqi (Mandy) Xia

夏梦琪

Postdoctoral Researcher at Yale University

About Me

Hi, this is Mandy!

I work on simulating how light interacts with complex materials and on algorithms that help us deduce physical properties from images.

I am a Postdoc at Yale University, working with Prof. Julie Dorsey and Prof. Holly Rushmeier. Previously I was part of the Realistic Graphics Lab (RGL) at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), working with Prof. Wenzel Jakob. I earned my PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2022, advised by Prof. Steve Marschner. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, I received my Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2016, where I worked with Prof. Chenfanfu Jiang, and Prof. Joseph Teran.

Outside of work, I like hiking, rock climbing, painting, and recently started learning the drums.

News

  • May 2025: Congratulations to Rachel Liang on successfully defending her master’s thesis!
  • April 2025: I was invited to give a talk at New England Symposium on Graphics at MIT.
  • March 2025: Our paper, Predicting Fabric Appearance Through Thread Scattering and Inversion, was conditionally accepted to SIGGRAPH 2025!
  • January 2025: I will be a guest instructor for CPCS 479/579 Advanced Topics in Computer Graphics (Spring 2025).
  • November 2024: I will be serving on the program committee of EGSR 2025.
  • October 2024: I will be serving on the Technical Paper Committee of SIGGRAPH 2025.

Publications

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Predicting Fabric Appearance Through Thread Scattering and Inversion
Mengqi (Mandy) Xia, Zhaoyang Zhang, Sumit Chaturvedi, Yutong Yi, Rundong Wu, Holly Rushmeier, Julie Dorsey
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2025)
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Retrieving Fine-Scale Leaf and Soil Spectral Properties from Canopy Reflectance Using Differentiable 3D Radiative Transfer
Jianbo Qi, Jifan Wei, Mengqi (Mandy) Xia, Donghui Xie
Submitted to Remote Sensing of Environment
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A Practical Wave Optics Reflection Model for Hair and Fur
Mengqi (Mandy) Xia, Bruce Walter, Christophe Hery, Olivier Maury, Eric Michielssen, Steve Marschner
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2023)
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A Full-Wave Reference Simulator for Computing Surface Reflectance
Yunchen Yu, Mengqi (Mandy) Xia, Bruce Walter, Eric Michielssen, Steve Marschner
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2023)
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Iridescent Water Droplets Beyond Mie Scattering
Mengqi (Mandy) Xia, Bruce Walter, Steve Marschner
Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2023)
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A Hyperspectral Space of Skin Tones for Inverse Rendering of Biophysical Skin Properties
Carlos Aliaga, Mengqi (Mandy) Xia, Hao Xie, Adrian Jarabo, Gustav Braun, Christophe Hery
Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2023)
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Gaussian Product Sampling for Rendering Layered Materials
Mengqi (Mandy) Xia, Bruce Walter, Christophe Hery, Steve Marschner
Computer Graphics Forum 39:1 (February 2020), presented at Eurographics 2021
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An Efficient Primal-Dual Method for the Obstacle Problem
Dominique Zosso, Braxton Osting, Mengqi (Mandy) Xia, Stanley J. Osher
Journal of Scientific Computing, 2017

Teaching Experience

CPCS 479/579 Advanced Topics in Computer Graphics

Spring 2025
Guest Instructor, Yale University

CS 5625 Interactive Computer Graphics

Spring 2019
Teaching Assistant, Cornell University

CS 4620 Introduction to Computer Graphics

Spring 2018
Teaching Assistant, Cornell University

CS 1112 Introduction to Computing Using MATLAB

Fall 2016, Spring 2017
Teaching Assistant, Cornell University

Industry Research Experience

Facebook Reality Labs

Summer 2020, 2021
Research intern

Pixar Animation Studios

Summer 2018
Research intern

Awards and Services

Selected for WiGRAPH Rising Stars

2022, 2023
A two-year program of mentorship and workshops co-located with SIGGRAPH 2022 and 2023

Selected for EECS Rising Stars, UC Berkeley

November 9-10, 2020
An academic career workshop for women in EECS

SIGGRAPH 2025, EGSR 2025, Eurographics 2025 Short Paper, CAD/Graphics 2025

Committee member

SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, Eurographics, Eurographics Symposium on Rendering, Pacific Graphics, Computer Graphics Forum, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques, Computers & Graphics, The Visual Computer, Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer

Reviewer

Invited Talks

Unveiling Reality Through Multiscale Optical Simulations and Inverse Rendering

Peking University, China
June, 2025
Tsinghua University, China
June, 2025
Beijing Normal University, China
June, 2025
New England Symposium on Graphics, MIT
April, 2025
School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech
Feb, 2025
Bio Inspired Vision Lab, Northwestern University
Jan, 2025

Physically Realistic Rendering of Complex Materials Using Wave Optics

Standford Computational Imaging Lab
Dec, 2023
Carnegie Mellon University Computer Graphics Group
Dec, 2023
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Mar, 2023
Pixel Cafe Seminar, University of California San Diego
Jan, 2022
Cornell CS Colloquium
Sept, 2021

A Practical Wave Optics Reflection Model for Hair and Fur

GAMES Webinar 303
Dec, 2023